Backyard Starship Read online

  I looked up to the ceiling, a mild flush on my cheeks. “Glad to hear you approve of my collection. Perry, a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “If I were to order you to never mention this topic again, what are the chances that gets followed?” Van asked.

  “To answer your question, to the extent that your orders to us don’t conflict with the Peacemakers’ Charter or various generally recognized interstellar laws—and there aren’t many of those—or certain other policies and procedures, yes, we’re bound to obey you,” Perry said.

  There were a bunch of things to unpack in that one statement. The Peacemakers’ Charter? Interstellar laws? And certain other policies or procedures—like what? But I shoved all that into my rapidly filling mental junk drawer to deal with later on. Right now, I wanted to make good and sure of one thing.

  “Okay, fine. I am ordering you guys to wipe all memories of my, ah, collection. You can do that, right? Just delete the data?”

  “And there’s one of those policies, right there. We’re not allowed to excise memories,” Perry said.

  Netty cut in. “Doing so can lead to processing issues, which can affect our performance. And I’m assuming you don’t want my performance to be affected while I’m, say, in the middle of a whole bunch of twist-drive calculations.”

  “It’s also just not allowed. Our memories have to remain intact in case they’re ever needed for review by the Council,” Perry said. “And before you ask who the Council is, rest assured, you’ll get a full briefing as soon as we begin our first op. That’s when you formally assume your role as a Peacemaker Initiate. Until then, suffice to say that it’s the governing body of all Peacemakers—more or less.”

  I waved it off. The list of things I didn’t understand, and questions I needed answered, was already so long that another wouldn’t matter. “Then allow me to suggest we keep my teen years hidden, like an unpleasant historical document. Oh, and my choice in clothes, too. I’m not proud of my selection in jeans.”

  “Neither am I. I’m only too happy to do so, within the limits of my protocols. Human fashion swings from simple to trashy, if I may say, and you needn’t worry. Only Netty and I will ever be aware of the fact that you wore jeans with rhinestones.”

  “That was one pair.”

  “Understood. It’s as good as in a vault,” Perry said smugly.

  “What happens now?”

  “Now, we confirm your outfitting with a b-suit and sidearms,” Perry replied. “Then, we activate your title, and you formally become a Peacemaker Initiate.”

  “And then the fun begins,” Netty added.

  I could only shake my head. “I’ll bet it does.”

  The b-suit turned out to be a battle suit—a sleek, midnight blue and black rig that covered me from neck to toes. A light pair of boots, made of something that resembled a cross between vinyl and butter-soft leather enclosed my feet. It had a helmet, too, which apparently allowed for vision all the way from near ultraviolet to far infrared, could generate radar and ultrasound imagery in no-light conditions, and made an airtight seal with the suit’s collar, allowing the whole rig to be used as a space suit.

  I stared in appreciation at the form fitting lethality of it all—at the supple suit, and the sinister helmet—it had a smooth, blank faceplate which, to anyone seeing it, was as black and featureless as a visored motorcycle helmet.

  “This is badass. Not gonna lie,” I muttered. At Perry’s urging, I stripped down to my underwear, then slid myself into it. It seemed to conform to my body even as I donned it, and sealed itself up the back as soon as I pushed my fingers into the linked gloves. I frowned at that.

  “Can’t I remove these gloves? So I can use my hands?” I asked, lifting my right and splaying my fingers out.

  In answer, Perry picked up one of my shoes in his beak and tossed it to me. I instinctively caught it, my frown deepening. What had been the point of that?

  But it hit me while I was holding the shoe. I could feel it, as though I held it in my bare hand. The glove was definitely there, but as far as my sense of touch was concerned, it didn’t exist at all.

  This technology would be worth—hell, billions to NASA, or Space-X, or the ESA, the Chinese, or anyone else hurling people into space atop chemical rockets.

  “And you said this is armor, too?”

  “It’s designed to stop all small-caliber projectiles and fragmentation effects of explosives up to a certain energy level. I’d give you the numbers, but it’s probably easier to understand this way. In terms of terrestrial weapons, it will stop any pistol round or grenade fragment completely, instantly distributing the kinetic energy over much of the suit’s surface area. Rifle caliber rounds might penetrate, but even if they don’t, they’re going to hurt. It also offers protection from brief pulses from directed-energy weapons, is effectively radiation proof, and is immune to the effects of corrosive and toxic chemicals.”

  “Holy shit. What can’t it do?”

  “It’s weakness is heat. What it can’t do is simply make your body heat go away. It can store it for brief periods of time, but you would eventually cook in the thermal energy given off by your own body.”

  “I’ll say it again. Badass.” I snapped my fingers, frowning. “About the heat, though--”

  “Radiant system in place. Under no circumstances will you be allowed to roast,” Perry said with great confidence.

  I replied with dignity. “Thank you. I prefer being medium-rare, at most.”

  Perry managed a snort, then next took me to the armory, which was really just a locker mounted inside a utility compartment full of ship components. When it opened, I jumped back as something moved inside.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you that this is where Waldo lives,” Perry said.

  “Who—or what—the hell is a Waldo?” I asked, watching as a chunky thing I’d taken as just another part of the Dragonet suddenly unfolded spider-like legs and disengaged itself from the opposite bulkhead.

  “Waldo is the Dragonet’s maintenance bot,” Netty said. “I use him to conduct routine maintenance and on-the-spot repairs of the ship.”

  “So there’s a third AI aboard?”

  “Waldo’s definitely got the A-part down, but he’s a little light in the I-part,” Perry said.

  The spidery construct turned a crystalline eye on me, stared for a moment, then folded itself back up and plugged itself back into a receptacle on the bulkhead.

  “Waldo has only limited autonomous function. Think of him as more of an extension of the ship, and of me,” Netty said.

  I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  Perry hopped into the compartment and revealed the armory. My standard sidearm, it seemed, was a handheld mass driver called a light slugger. Essentially a handheld rail gun, it could drive a three millimeter slug to some fantastic velocity—enough, Perry claimed, that it could penetrate the armor of some older terrestrial tanks. The armory also contained a heavy slugger, a long-arm variant of the light version that was heavier and bulkier but with more penetrating power. A goo gun, a non-lethal sidearm that could fling out a short-ranged gout of adhesive foam to immobilize a target, rounded out the ranged weapons.

  There was also a short knife with a vibrating blade that could cut through most materials like the proverbial hot knife and butter. But the thing that really intrigued me was a sword. An actual sword. The geek in me recognized it as a short sword, generally similar to a Roman gladius, a short, broad-bladed stabbing weapon. I picked it up and hefted it. It was surprisingly light for its size but otherwise seemed kind of… mundane was the first word that came to mind. Compared to all the other technological marvels that had just poured into my life, this seemed strangely out of place.

  I turned to Perry. “There’s got to be a story to this. Like, did Gramps run around with it on his hip, stabbing people he couldn’t just, you know, blow to bits or vaporize at a distance?”

  “Yes.”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “That is the Moonsword, and it’s your badge of office as a Peacemaker. However, both ancient custom and formal protocol require you to reforge the Moonsword by your own hand in order to gain status as a Peacemaker Acolyte.”

  “I thought you said I just had to launch on my first actual mission to become a Peacemaker.”

  “A Peacemaker Initiate, yes. That means you’re both covered and bound by the terms of the Charter, but your powers under it will be limited until you earn higher ranks.”

  “In other words, you’ll be a noob,” Netty put in.

  “Look, you guys are going to have to explain this Charter, and my powers and stuff—”

  “We will, in due course,” Perry said. “Too much information all at once isn’t going to do you much good.”

  “Well, neither are these weapons, honestly. I can shoot pretty well, sure, or at least I could. I wasn’t in the Army all that long, and I’ve done a fair bit of hunting and target shooting, but—” I picked up the light slugger, a vicious-looking little weapon. “But as for shooting at other humans, I don’t know.”

  I was a cyber-warfare expert. My weapons had been keyboards and mouses, processing power and relentless patience. I’d never fired shots in anger at, well, anyone, outside of FPS video games, anyway. And I was pretty sure that things like Borderlands or Call of Duty didn’t really count.

  “Well that’s no problem, then,” Perry said.

  “How the hell do you figure that?”

  “Because you won’t be shooting at many humans.”

  I toured the remainder of the Dragonet. Perry and Netty explained briefly how the ship worked as I did. I frankly didn’t understand most of it, since it was based on tech that, until a day ago, didn’t exist for me outside of science
fiction. This included the drive, which was powered by the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter. That provided the juice both for the n-drive, or normal-space drive, and the t-drive, or twist drive, that could supposedly fling me between stars. But the AIs’ description revealed a catch. A big one.

  “The amount of antimatter required to power the twist drive is significant. With its current fuel stock, the Dragonet can only make a single twist,” Netty said.

  If I understood this, that was a serious problem. “So I could go to, say, Alpha Centauri or Betelgeuse or wherever—” Even as I said those things, I realized they were just words, because the actual concept of traveling to such places simply didn’t fit inside my brain. “Anyway, I could go somewhere far away but never be able to get back?”

  “Not without refueling, no. There’d still be enough fuel to maintain the Dragonet’s essential systems functions and operate the n-drive, though,” Netty said.

  “So what happens if we twist drive to someplace light-years away where we can’t refuel?”

  “Then one of your distant descendants will eventually make it back to tell the story,” Perry said. And although he had a beak, I could swear he somehow grinned as he said it.

  “That would kind of require a woman, wouldn’t it? To even have descendants? Or do you guys have an answer for that, too, like cloning or something?” I shot back.

  Netty cut in. “The whole discussion is academic anyway. Even if you could produce progeny, asexually or otherwise, a more direct one would likely die in deep space when the antimatter fuel was finally exhausted.”

  I scowled. “So am I missing something here? Or does it just seem incredibly stupid to have a ship that can only twist one way? I mean, how the hell did my grandfather deal with that?”

  “Ah, well, that’s where it gets complicated,” Perry replied. “When your grandfather died, certain components of the Dragonet were claimed by other Peacemakers who had liens on them. That’s how business among Peacemakers is handled.”

  “Liens. So you’re saying another Peacemaker came here, to the farm, took some pieces off this ship, then flew away as part of some business arrangement?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, that included extended-duration fuel cells, which are quite highly prized among Peacemakers.”

  “Among many others,” Netty added.

  “So how do I get them back?”

  “Well, you could buy them, but they’re rare on the open market and really, really expensive on the black one. And you don’t have enough wealth in the first place.”

  “Hey, Gramps was pretty well-off.”

  “Unfortunately, terrestrial currency has little value beyond, well, Earth,” Perry replied. “Your grandfather has also bequeathed you the full value of his account in the Quiet Room, but even that’s not enough.”

  “Wait. Are you telling me I have money in some intergalactic bank?”

  “Well, unless you intend to scribe all of your bonds onto certi-chips and stash them under your mattress, yes, that’s where your account is.”

  “Okay, let me guess. I can earn more—bonds? Is that what your money is called?”

  “That’s right. It’s the standard galactic currency,” Perry replied.

  “So I can earn more by doing Peacemaker jobs?”

  “You can. There are contract payments, bounties, a stipend from the Council, plus any funds you acquire in a more—let’s call it a more creative way.”

  “So, stealing it.”

  “I prefer my description.”

  “You can also enter a covenant with another party,” Netty put in. “That’s usually another Peacemaker, but it doesn’t have to be. Essentially, you provide something of value and get something of value in return.”

  “And that’s how Gramps had liens on parts of his ship. He owed them because of covenants he had that involved them.”

  “Exactly. He offered a lien on the Dragonet’s extended-duration fuel cells in return for the services of another Peacemaker. He’d intended to pay off the covenant over time and discharge the lien, but he still owed bonds at the time of his death. Accordingly, the lienholder came to claim his compensation. It’s all perfectly legal,” Netty replied.

  “Yeah, I’m sure it is. It also sounds like I need to keep a lawyer on board. An accountant, too.”

  Perry aimed his golden gaze directly at me. “You have both.”

  “You?”

  “Among my many talents, yes.”

  “A mechanical bird who claims to be a combat AI, a legal expert, and a financial guru? Sure, why not.”

  I realized that I had a whole lot to learn. And I still hadn’t even stepped into the actual role.

  Which brought me circling back to a question I’d been constantly pushing aside until later. Except later had finally become now.

  Did I even want to be a Peacemaker?

  That evening, I sat down at the kitchen table with a shot of whiskey over ice and stared out at the barn. How many evenings and weekends had I spent in there, piddling around with what I’d taken, at the time, to be cutting edge electronics—when all along there was a hyperdrive spaceship sitting close enough to touch?

  It made me wonder what else was hidden away from everyday sight?

  But I brushed that aside as interesting, though not especially important musings. I fixed my mind on what did matter.

  Did I want to be a so-called Peacemaker?

  Perry and Netty had revealed some of Gramps’ missions to me, or at least the parts of them they could. Apparently, the Galactic Knights Uniformed, the body that oversaw, or regulated, or actually owned the Peacemakers—I wasn’t sure of the details—had a host of rules and policies that precluded revealing some mission information, even to me. But it didn’t matter. I got the idea quickly.

  Gramps, as a Peacemaker, had essentially been an interstellar troubleshooter. He’d participated in a wide range of missions, in a multitude of different places. Some had been clearly military operations, but others were more like law enforcement, or even resolving contract disputes and disagreements over trade. And a few had taken place on relatively low-tech worlds, the most primitive of which seemed to roughly correspond to Earth’s early medieval period. Apparently, the whole primary, non-interference directive thing was real. Low-tech societies were supposed to be left alone, and if they weren’t either by accident or design, the Peacemakers might be called on to fix it.

  So fly among the stars in the Dragonet, fixing problems and generally trying to keep the peace. Or—

  I glanced out the window at the sprawl of corn and soybean fields receding to the horizon, under an overcast, autumn sky. With most crops harvested, the greyish light only managed to render the drab yellows and tans and browns into even more drab yellows and tans and browns. I sniffed. I had enormous respect for the people who could be successful farmers. It takes something that I knew I didn’t have.

  That’s probably why I ended up in cyber-ops, my current day job. The pay was decent, and sometimes excellent, but it mostly involved long hours staring at a monitor, running various tools to crack security, and then either extract, alter or plant data. It had none of the frenetic keyboard-pounding, heated action portrayed in pop culture. It was really more like daytrading, or even just ordinary coding, but with different sequences of key-presses and mouse-clicks—

  I stood. Did I want to be a Peacemaker?

  Not particularly, no, was the honest answer. But it also wasn’t the right question. The right question was, did I want to pass up the chance to give it a try?

  And the answer to that was easy. No way in hell would I miss this chance.

  6

  I made myself more comfortable in the Dragonet’s pilot’s seat and looked down. Far below me, the Horn of Africa scrolled slowly past, giving way to the northern part of the Arabian Sea. Yemen, Oman, and Saudi Arabia sprawled off to my left, the Indian Ocean to my right, and the coastline of India and Pakistan straight ahead.

  I shook my head, taking in the dapple of sunlight on the Arabian Sea.

  “Okay, so according to, uh—” I studied the instruments that Perry and Netty had started explaining to me. “That. That thing, right there. That’s telling me I’m in a stable orbit, right?”