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Story

Captain Jack and the Race to Redula – Chapter 08: All Too Real

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By POW

Unical date: unchanged

Sam rolled his eyes.  You have got to be kidding me.

Captain Jack’s voice sounded exactly like the voice of the guard he had replaced… which meant he sounded like all the guards.  “Too corny?” he asked.  “Yeah, I agree.  A pirate might don an ensemble like this at a ball, perhaps, if he wanted to catch the eye of some starry-eyed sailor on shore leave, dazzle him, seduce him and abuse him and rob him blind and ditch him the next morning.  But it’s completely impractical for everyday use.  How can a man swing a lash accurately with all this flooshy fabric getting in the way?”

The figure vanished and then rematerialized, this time wearing only the leather under-suit.  It looked very much like the uniform of the interrogators: flat, smooth, practical, studded with pockets and straps and loops for carrying a variety of equipment.  The fancy green boots were now plain black leather.   These were the clothes of a security agent or a soldier or an assassin.  Without the billowing bustles Sam could clearly see the physique underneath, and it was a fine one.  Despite his situation, he couldn’t help but stare.  Solid, well-defined muscles; broad shoulders tapering to a V at the waist; arms and legs sturdy and strong without being overdeveloped.  This guy’s body was so well-suited to Sam’s taste that it seemed to have been custom-designed to his precise specifica… right, of course.  Now that he thought about it, that was probably exactly the case.  If this was the avatar of the AI that controlled the simspace, Sam had spent the last four days feeding it information on what kind of men appealed to him… information that was now being put to use against him.

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Story

Captain Jack and the Race to Redula – Chapter 01: Pyrellia’s Wing

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By POW

Author’s note: I’m grateful to Metal for providing the inspiration for this story. It is set in a thinly disguised, probably recognizable fictional universe (hint: it rhymes with “car check”), so if you’d rather call the simspace a “holodeck”, you have my blessing. It’s a long story (11 chapters) and it starts slowly; please be patient!

 

Unical date: 3752.563.21

[Framing shot: a space station in orbit above a yellow-orange gas giant planet. Cut to interior of station.]

“I know this isn’t the best of circumstances,” Commander Shizaki said, “but there really is no other choice.  We must make do with what we have.”

Lieutenant Sam Green tried to keep his face impassive, allowing only concern to show, a slight creasing of the skin between his eyes.  “I understand.  Bareem needs to return home, of course.  But… are you certain there’s no one else who could make the trip with me?”  Don’t show even a trace of enthusiasm, not a hint.

The commander shook his head with regret.  “No one, I’m afraid.  This station’s normal complement is eleven staff, and we’re down two as it is so we were already stretched thin even before this emergency.  The need to get Lieutenant Farquhar home for his father’s funeral pushes us to the absolute limit.  I’ll be sending Lieutenant Urkenzie out in our one available interstellar-capable ship to take him back to Kerangia and then return.  That’s a fourteen-day round trip, and during that time we’ll have to shut down parts of our operations.  That will result in angry communications from research teams all over this sector, each one of them in high dudgeon over the absence of data they were expecting us to provide.  I anticipate at least one court case to be filed over the fact that our staffing shortage meant missing out on the once-in-ten-thousand-years opportunity to, I don’t know, capture the spectral signature of a snout-nosed pulsar or something equally absurd.  The case will of course be dismissed as frivolous but it will still be a tedious bureaucratic hassle.”

He put his hands flat on his desk.  “But that is my problem to deal with.  Yours, of course, is to get those tribronium plates to Kappa Redulans.  Those people are in dire need, and compared with that, the conniption fits of inconvenienced researchers don’t even register.”

“Of course, of course,” Sam agreed.  “Main power system destroyed, backup teetering on the brink of collapse, which means no air recycling and no climate control after it fails.  And so far away!”

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