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Story

Captain Jack and the Race to Redula – Chapter 11: Kappa Redulans

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By POW

Start at Chapter 1 by clicking here

There came a day when the routine changed.  By Sam’s count they were at nineteen strokes per minute when the first hint came wafting through the oarlocks: the smell of gunsmoke.  This was different but not different enough to merit Sam’s attention and so he remained focused on his rowing, pushing and pulling the long wooden handle back and forth.  But then there came voices: loud, shouting voices bellowing words Sam could not make out.  Louder they grew, and then other voices joined in, fainter and  more distant.  Fuck!  The Royal Navy had caught up with them, despite all their efforts to keep ahead!  Sam leaned into the oar even harder but after only a dozen strokes a great blow struck the side of the ship and suddenly there was no weight in Sam’s arms.

He stared dumbfounded at the stump of oar for long seconds before realizing what had happened: something, probably a cannonball, had blasted off the other end, leaving just the splintered wreckage in his hand.  Sam turned to his oarmate – whose name he still did not know after all this time – to see if he had any idea what to do, but the man was slumped over in his seat, leaning against the outer wall which, Sam suddenly noticed, had also taken some of the impact.  Cracks and fissures appeared where there had been none before.

Cracks and fissures in an ocean-going vessel’s hull were not good.  Not good at all.

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Story

Captain Jack and the Race to Redula – Chapter 07: It Can Always Get Worse

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By POW

To start at Chapter 1, click here

Unical date: still probably 3752.563.27

Sam’s eyes went wide.  “Nghuhh… nguhh…” he said, shaking his head.  There was no possible way that an NPC in a sim should know that he was in a simspace at all, let alone know the name of the ship the simspace was located on.  Reality and unreality were starting to blur in a very unpleasant and upsetting way.

“You can either give it to me now,” the guard said, “or you can suffer for another day or three or six and give it to me then.  I don’t mind waiting but I suspect you might prefer sooner rather than later.  So… what’s the code?”

No.  His authorization code… Sam could not give that away, not under these circumstances.  Something was fundamentally wrong here.  The simspace had been hijacked somehow.  Someone must have gained access to it and was now messing with Sam’s head… but who?  And how?  He was in the fastest ship in the Confederation and already at least four days’ travel away from the last outpost between civilization and Kappa Redulans, and at these warp speeds no signal could possibly be coming through clearly enough to allow a remote attacker to react in real time to events on the ship or in its simspace.

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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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