Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Black Ocean Mission Pack 2

  Mission 5 - Alien Racer

  Mission 6 - Retro Version

  Mission 7 - Siege of Mortania

  Mission 8 - Moon of Odysseus

  Mission 8.5 - Pinball Wizardry

  Thanks for reading

  Books by J.S. Morin

  About the Author

  Mission Pack 2

  Missions 5 - 8.5 of the Black Ocean Series

  J.S. Morin

  Alien Racer

  Mission 5 of the Black Ocean Series

  J.S. Morin

  Alien Racer

  Mission 5 of: Black Ocean

  Copyright © 2015 Magical Scrivener Press

  Engines thundered, each growing higher and closer until the Doppler Effect inverted and they sped past. The Squall 2560 race crafts fired maneuvering thrusters as they hit the hairpin turn through the artificial asteroid field of the racecourse. It was the Silde Slims 250K, and it was live on holovid feed, pumped directly into the common room of the Mobius.

  All the sounds were artificial, of course, computer generated to give the old-race feel and rev up the engines of the viewers. But pure racing was hard to watch, just tiny, one-person ships flitting by at outrageous speeds. From a stationary vantage without studio effects, there was no telling who was winning or what was happening in the race.

  “My money’s on Tobago,” Carl said, leaning into the next turn as the racers poured through the course single file.

  Roddy snorted, the best laugh he could manage with a beer tilted back. “No it’s not. Your account’s on lockdown.”

  “Well, it would be, if I was betting on this race,” Carl replied. “Look at those lines. He’s holding tighter to the turns than the other guys out there.”

  “Half those guys are women,” Tanny noted. She was seated at the kitchen table, watching from the other side with the bored half-interest of someone who was only watching because it was too loud to ignore. If it wasn’t for the gentle chugging of the food processor and the sandwich it would spit out shortly, Carl didn’t think she’d have stuck around at all.

  The racers passed through a translucent checkerboard gate projected across the course like a sheet of holographic glass. It marked the lap, and the Squalls accelerated into a long straightaway, jockeying position. Strictly for the holovid viewers, pop-up logos and pilot names hovered near each vehicle. The announcer was probably yammering about where this driver went to school, or how that driver dreamed of becoming a racer since she was five years old, but Roddy had shut the announcer feed off halfway through Lap 1.

  The door to Mort’s quarters opened. “Is it entirely necessary to watch that science-mobile racing at tornado volume? I’m trying to read,” the wizard griped.

  “You looking up ways for how to change my hair back to normal?” Carl snapped. It had been two weeks since that azrin sword master—wizard was more like it—had cursed him, turning every hair on his body blue. Mort had deigned to undo all of it but the mop of blue hair on his head. Carl didn’t believe for a second that the wizard had any confusion on how to fix the rest.

  “No.”

  Carl grabbed the remote from Roddy and cranked the volume until it hurt his ears. He glared at Mort until the wizard retreated into his room. He was probably grumbling something profane, or old, or some Shakespearean combination of the two. But whatever he may have said was drowned out by the synthetic engine noise of sixteen Squall racing ships.

  “Do you mind?” Tanny shouted from the kitchen area.

  “Yes,” Carl shouted back.

  Roddy wrestled the remote from Carl’s hands after a brief struggle and turned the holoprojector down to a tolerable volume. “You can’t stay pissed at Mort forever.”

  “I can hold out until he changes my hair back,” Carl said.

  The door to Esper’s quarters opened. “Would you mind keeping it down? I’m reading.”

  “Two of a fucking kind,” Carl muttered.

  Esper looked over to Tanny. “He blow up at Mort again?”

  “Yup.”

  “It looks fine, you know,” Esper said. “Blue suits you.” The door shut, and she was gone.

  “You could probably get him to put it back if you apologize,” Roddy said quietly, barely audible over the race. “Wasn’t his fault you pissed off that azrin shaman or whateverthehell he was.”

  “Yeah, but it’s Mort’s job to take care of shit like this,” Carl replied. “Mriy doesn’t let guys rough us up for laughs. Tanny doesn’t land us in restricted space because she’s having a bad day. You don’t vent the waste recycler through the crew cabins as a joke.”

  Roddy perked up. “Hey, that would be funny.”

  “The point is, we have a wizard on board, and it would be nice if a wizard did his job,” Carl said, shouting the last words to make sure Mort heard him through the door.

  That door opened seconds later. “You want your damn hair back, smart guy?” Mort asked. “How about this? You know that ad that’s been blaring every half hour during that rotten race of yours?”

  “The one looking for unsigned racers to join the circuit?” Roddy asked.

  “That one,” Mort confirmed. “You’re always yapping about how you’re better than those flyboys who zip around with no one shooting at them. If you can prove it, I’ll turn your hair back to that dull hay color you’re pining for.”

  “Fuck that,” Carl replied. “I could pay a one-timer to some local wizard to get it fixed. Point is, I shouldn’t have to.”

  “If you don’t think you could win, I—”

  “Don’t pull that psychology shit on me,” Carl snapped. “I’m not in the mood.”

  Roddy scratched his chin with one prehensile foot. “Well, there is that quarter-million terra prize.”

  There was that. And it was true that none of the racers in the Silde Slims 250K had ever flown under fire. None of them had the kind of chops to match a navy pilot. Plus, Squalls were just a civilian model of Typhoon, stripped down for racing. There probably weren’t many active fighter pilots in Earth Navy that had as many hours logged in a Typhoon as Carl, never mind a bunch of racer wannabes.

  Carl glared sidelong at the wizard, then over to the holo-projector, then back again. “Prize money’s mine.”

  # # #

  Alone, in the solitude of his quarters, Carl brought up a copy of the advert on his datapad. His wasn’t one of the fancy datapads that had a built-in holoprojector, but it could show him a flatvid version, and the info would be the same. That was all that mattered. The laaku narrator spoke perfect English with just enough of a native Edzu accent to sound sophisticated. Unlike the corny ad that got him into trouble on Meyang with the sword-fighting school, this production was silk smooth and polished chrome.

  “Think you have what it takes? Those racers aren’t doing anything you can’t do—and better. Admit it, you’ve always wanted to try. Well, pilots, now’s your chance. The Silde Slims Cadet Racer Challenge is looking for 16 pilots to compete in a series of grueling challenges to earn ONE spot in the Pan Galactic Race League. The winner will receive fame, glory, a place among the racing elite… and 250,000 terras.

  “So ask yourself: Are you the best undiscovered racer in the Galaxy? Are you as good as the pilots of the Pan Galactic Race League? Sign up today and find out.”

  If someone had drilled a hole and peeked into Carl’s brain, he couldn’t have conceived a pitch with a sharper hook or better bait for him. Fuck those laaku psychological martketeers. Carl hit the playback again.

  “…The winner will receive fame, glory, a place amon
g the racing elite… and 250,000 terras.

  “So ask yourself: Are you the best undiscovered racer in the Galaxy? Are you as good as the pilots of the Pan Galactic Race League? Sign up today and find out.”

  … and again.

  “…Are you the best undiscovered racer in the Galaxy? Are you as good as the pilots of the Pan Galactic Race League?”

  “You bet your ass I am. Maybe better.”

  # # #

  Phabian. It got called a lot of other things—Earth’s Little Sister, Laaku Prime, the Black Mirror. It was the latter that Carl found most appropriate. While Earth strove for the perfect mix of historical, modern, and natural, on Phabian they went completely modern. The planet devoured light, collected into millions of square kilometers of solar arrays. It was a mirror that didn’t reflect.

  But he was inside it now. There wasn’t really an “on” for Phabian. Nature preserves required special clearance and more hassle than anyone wanted to go through just to park outdoors. The laaku lived under domes, worked in grids, and traveled via tubes. The funny thing was, it felt more like outdoors than anyplace Carl had been in ages. Solar simulator lights reproduced the same wavelength as Sol. The air was filled with floral and arboreal scents matching those of Earth plants. Gentle breezes in the tubes carried spring crispness. Laaku scientists: tinkering with nature and doing it better. It would have made a nice motto. It was better than the official one: “Phabian: birthplace of the sentient mind.”

  Carl wasn’t sure just how many sentient minds stood with him in the line for the Silde Slims tryout. There were hundreds of bodies, but probably a good half of them were brain-dead slobs out to make fools of themselves. The competition had brought out the crazies. Challenge a guy to a bar fight, odds are he’d blow you off or yap something back at you. Put money on the line, and Scrawny Joe Beerstain will climb into the ring with the champ. The fools didn’t care that the odds were astronomical, and that it was a skill competition, not a lottery. Humanity had thrived on being too dumb to back down from a challenge, and unsurprisingly, most of the Beerstains in attendance were human.

  At least the line kept moving. Interviews were taking a couple minutes apiece, and there was a split at the head of the line, where applicants were being taken to one of three rooms. As Carl watched, he looked for some pattern, any clue as to whether the Silde Slims officials that patrolled the line were doing triage and sending real applicants through one door and wheel chocks into the others. No such luck. It didn’t help that there were only a few that struck him as serious potential candidates.

  A guy in a flight club jacket and a buzz haircut had the look of a serious applicant. He didn’t gawk at the races playing on the holos and flat panels scattered around the queue, and he had that straight-backed posture of someone who’d served aboard ship. Toward the head of the line was a sitharn—Carl couldn’t tell the gender—which was enough to make him a contender. Squalls were built by humans and had a ready-made conversion for laaku pilots. For a reptilian sitharn to be hanging out in a contest designed for primates meant he had something to prove. Just a few places ahead of Carl in line, a pubescent boy appeared out of place, at least physically. He was scrawny and gawky, with hunched shoulders that meant he was embarrassed, intimidated, or just awkward at that in-between age where he didn’t like attention.

  With hours to wait and feet growing sorer by the minute, Carl tired of the exercise. The pilots didn’t matter. They might have been AI, simulator drones, or Zheen for all the difference it made. They were just hurdles and ankle-high ones at that. Carl turned his attention to checking out the women.

  By a quick estimate, and leaving out the laaku and a scattering of more exotic xenos, a little over half the applicants were women. It made sense, in a way. The naval flight corps was nearly half women, and there was that longstanding bias toward testosterone-fueled aggression poured into the military’s foundation. Take away the preference for killer instinct, and you were left with pilots who were lighter on average and better able to handle high-G maneuvers. Packed into a crowded tube with lithe, daredevil women who spoke fluent pilot? There were worse ways to spend an afternoon.

  “Hey, so what brings you out for this little raffle?” Carl asked the woman two places ahead of him, talking over the head of the laaku between them.

  The woman turned. She had striking violet eyes, with hair and lips tinted to match. “I was waiting to meet you. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Carl put up his hands in defense. “Just makin’ small talk. Can’t blame a guy for gettin’ bored out of his skull waiting for the herd to move. Figured I might as well get to know someone who was going to make it.” He hadn’t picked this woman out as any sort of exception to the general blasé of the candidates, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “Sure,” she replied. “You got my flight credentials by staring at my ass and the back of my head.”

  “Carl Ramsey,” he said, sticking out a hand. “Expert evaluator of pilots and asses. I’m both myself.”

  She snorted, but the corner of her lip curled in an escaping smile. “July Monroe.” July shook Carl’s hand.

  “Excuse me!” the laaku between them protested. The flirtatious exchange took place right over his head.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Carl muttered. “Have her place in line.” Still holding onto July’s hand, he guided her around the indignant laaku.

  “What made you think I didn’t mind you giving away my place?” July asked. She sounded more inquisitive than angry.

  Carl shrugged. “There’s a hundred people to go. We can stand here, bored and quiet, we could piss off some poor guy stuck between us, or this. And you never answered my question.”

  “I’ve been racing my whole life,” July replied. “Atmospheric stuff as a kid, then on to orbital and deep space. I got stuck in the small time, though. Easy money. No risk. It always seemed better to eat than to take a shot at the big time and burn all my fuel. This is all expenses paid. All it costs me is transport here and back. You?”

  “I was yelling at the holovid, and my crew told me to put up or shut up.”

  “You have a ship?” July asked. “Must be nice flying something you actually own.”

  They stepped forward as the line advanced.

  “Oh, I don’t fly it. At least, not much. It’s a shuttle that I converted into a light freighter, but I still fly it like a Typhoon, and the crew doesn’t like feeling G’s.”

  “So you’re ex-military,” July concluded. She rolled her eyes. “I can’t tell you the number of former navy fighter jockeys I’ve ion-trailed. Squalls and Typhoons handle nothing alike. It’s all about manual control of the maneuvering thrusters in the turns, not just lining up a crosshair and firing.”

  Carl stopped himself short. He had been able to snap back that he’d raced in his Typhoon for fun with his squadron, to keep them all sharp. There wasn’t a member of the Half-Devils of Squadron 333 that he wouldn’t pick over the field at this cattle drive. But then he took a quick glance at just how many of those cattle were left to go ahead of him. He did a high-orbit estimate of how long it would be before he was done waiting. He predicted that such a reply would probably end his conversation with July on a sour note, with her still stuck a half meter away for the next couple hours.

  “Hey, what’s a guy gonna do?” Carl asked with a shrug. “Just climbing into a fighter again, even if it’s stripped down to a racing hull—well, it’s been a long time, I guess.”

  She narrowed those violet eyes at him. “So you’re just here angling for a joyride?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Carl said. “If I blunder into a win, I’m smooth with that, too.” He winked at her. “I like the eyes, by the way. Suits you.”

  “I like the hair,” July replied. “Flashy for a veteran.”

  Carl ran a self-conscious hand through his blue locks. He’d forgotten how he must look. “Funny story about that…” There were two hours or so until they were called in for their interviews, a
nd Carl used that time to regale July with stories and wheedle out bits of her background. Some of the things he told her were even true.

  # # #

  “What do you think he’s doing right now?” Esper asked. She sat on the couch with a mug of cocoa, two tiny marshmallows melting away.

  “Making a damn fool of himself,” Mort replied from beside her. They were alone on the Mobius, parked in a hanger on the outskirts of Kethlet, Roddy’s hometown. Of course “outskirts” and “town” didn’t do justice to the sprawling, planet-wide metropolis that Kethlet was just one portion of. “It’s your turn to pick.”

  Esper took up the holovid remote with a sigh and sipped her cocoa. “Is this all we’re going to do while we’re on Phabian?” She flipped through menu after submenu, hoping something caught her eye.

  “We are in the den of science, on one of the most populated worlds in the known galaxy,” Mort replied. “If you wander around out there, some bit of science is going to identify you and cough up a hairball because you’re supposed to be dead.”

  “And you’re wanted by the Convocation,” Esper replied. “I know. I’ve heard it all before. But there are like fifty billion people on Phabian. You’d think a few could slip through the cracks. Maybe I should just go find someone official and see if I can get the record of my death squared away. I mean, it’s not like anyone will care, right?”

  “The One Church preaches a lot more forgiveness than it practices,” Mort warned. “I wouldn’t kneel before that juggernaut, if I were you.”

  “Aren’t you being a little dramatic?” Esper asked. “I mean, what are they going to do to me? It’s not like I broke any laws.”

  Mort seemed about to say something, but closed his mouth and just stared at her. His tilted head and furrowed brow displayed more perplexity than she had ever seen on his face before.

  “That they know about,” Esper amended. “I mean, as far as they know, I’m a runaway schoolteacher, right?”

  “You kidnapped Adam.”

  “Who was a scientist who’d stuffed his mind into a cloned body. I’m sure that’s all been cleared up by now.”