Rip and replace of my two earlier vignettes...
"Good morning, everyone. Anything of interest overnight?"
The young lady at the communications console - a new employee, I didn't know her name yet - looked up. "Hello, Commander. The Terrestrial circuits are filled with spam, but we also have three requests from 'dane tourist agencies to rent hotel space in the new module."
Conventional wisdom among fen is that 'danes don't like space, but there's a steady tourist business this close to Earth. Adding a separate habitation module with "genuine Venusian diamond panoramic windows" and "genuine NASA life support systems" to the Stellvia was a stroke of genius, despite being a necessity to preserve some of my secrets - it gives me a steady source of 'dane income, which gives me the ability to buy stocks of all the lovely 'dane toys that so many fen enjoy.
The Stellvia? It's named after the station from Ryou Azuki's manga of the same name, of course, although only the comparatively small subset of shojo-fen who like space opera recognize the name without seeing the explanatory plaque beside each airlock. Oh, that wasn't what you meant? Ah... It started small, as such things usually do. When I started this little project, NASA was still launching shuttles with those big fuel tanks. I borrowed an idea from Ben Bova and got NASA to sell me a half-dozen unused main Shuttle fuel tanks. A few fen in NASA towed them up to LEO, where I took delivery of them. Some handwavium and some "elbow grease" got them safe to inhabit, and I towed them to L5 with the Epsilon Blade, where my command staff and I welded them together into a station. Then I moved in; I've rarely left Stellvia except for conventions since 2010.
(The Epsilon Blade? My personal craft, built to my specifications while I was still based on Earth. Winning the biggest lottery prize in all of 2008 let me indulge. It's a two-deck scoutship, named after a couple of friends who died in a car crash before handwavium was discovered - the name has nothing to do with one-up'ing the trekkies, despite the ship looking a lot like one of their Flyers. I'll get back to it later; you wanted to know about the Stellvia...)
That was the Stellvia in 2008. Liberal expenditure on metals and space-trained workers let me build the station up to the six-deck structure it is now, with the aforementioned habitation module being the newest part of the station. (One of these years, the whole thing might even look like the manga "Stellvia".) It's a reasonably-comfortable place for fen to buy 'dane luxury items, 'danes to go "way out into space", and both sides to gawk at the other (with the express understanding that anyone who gawks is expected to be gawked at in return - I often have to hire down-on-their-luck fen to be gawked at). There aren't many wavtech devices installed, aside from the defenses and gravity tech. (Yes, gravity tech. I've never seen anyone else use 'wavium that way, although I've heard stories ... Most of those stories name the Professor, though, so I'll believe it when I see it.)
"Thank you. Anything on the fen channels?"
The communications staffer looked at her display. "There's something here about a convention ..."
"Convention?" I interrupted. "That's top priority on the fen circuits; you should have started with that. Show it to me, please."
"I'm sorry, sir." She copied the e-mail to my hand computer, where I read it... or tried to read it. For the love of Belldandy, who wrote this? I toggled the inner station's all-call. "Command staff to main operations, please. I repeat: command staff to main operations, please."
The Stellvia's command staff is a bit odd - it's a tightly-guarded secret (which means that only half of fandom knows it) that it's made up of AI androids. Bribing Ryou Azuki and Kozuke Fujishima to share all of their notes, and licence a few likenesses and the name "Stellvia", wasn't too expensive - writing manga doesn't pay that well, apparently. In exchange for the quarter-million dollars that cost, I got everything I needed to get personality simulations coded and character likenesses sculpted. That cost a few million dollars... I'm still not sure why only female characters who need to wear glasses (three of Mr. Fujishima's, one of Ms. Azuki's) were the only ones to "wake up" when I installed the solid-state 'wavium in their bodies, but they're a good core crew who are unswervingly loyal to me. Their quirks, besides the one about needing glasses, were minor, and I could live with them. They had to live with them, after all. (And I never, ever, mention the robots that didn't "wake up" around them.) There are four of them - engineers Sora Hasegawa and Kohran Li, security specialist Yoriko Nikaido, and pilot Yayoi Fujisawa.
"Yoriko, does this make any sense to you?" I handed her the convention e-mail. She read and re-read the announcement while the rest of the command staff arrived.
Finally, she looked up. "It's a convention announcement."
"I figured out that much on my own." And if Yoriko didn't know anything about it, it must have come out of the blue. Yoriko hears about everything ... and can't keep any of it secret, which is why I had the hotel built as a separate section. "Any ideas why there's a convention announcement at this time of year?"
Everyone shook their heads.
I sighed. "Only one way to find out, then. Ms. Hasegawa, Ms. Fujisawa, please prep the Epsilon Blade for launch in two hours. Ms. Nikaido, you're in charge until we return."
"Understood, sir," replied Yoriko.
"Stay out of the new module. And don't pester the paying guests."
"Oh, that's no fun ..."
--------
"Noah, why are we going to Phobos?"
"It's a convention, Sora. We can't afford to be left out of a con; who knows what rules might be passed that would unduly affect us if we weren't there to object. Remember the first official convention, two years ago?"
My chief engineer shook her head. "That isn't what I meant. I know why you're going - it's business. Why are Yayoi and I going?"
Yayoi looked away from the Epsilon Blade's pilot console. "I assume I'm along to fly the ship."
"True," I smiled, "but that isn't the only reason. We've all heard the rumours about reaver activity; I want my best pilot and my best engineer with me so that this ship gets to Phobos and back." Sora blushed at the compliment; Yayoi didn't seem to react. "More importantly, I enjoy your company."
Sora was about to reply when the ship shook. "Impacts on the force screen, Commander!" shouted Yayoi.
"Evasive!" But Yayoi was already spinning the ship on two of its axes at the same time while applying random thrust, if the view out the front window as anything to go by. "What's going on?"
"We've taken hits near the engines from kinetic-kill weapons, possibly missiles without warheads. They would have disabled us if we didn't have the screens up." Score one for paranoia... Amongst the gadgets installed on the Epsilon Blade was the most powerful handwavium forcescreen my go-betweens could buy from "Schrodinger" Katz.
I didn't want a fight. Despite my reputation, I don't like resorting to violence. I walked over to the ship's second control station and toggled the transmitter. "Unidentified ship, this is the Epsilon Blade out of L5 station Stellvia. Please cease fire and state your terms." There was no reply. "I say again, please cease fire and state your terms." Their only answer was another missile across our starboard side. I switched the transmitter off. "Yayoi, can we outrun them?"
"I doubt it, Commander."
Damn, no choice but to add another line to my reputation... "Sora, since they refuse to answer, designate them 'Boskonian'." (That's our code-term for violent pirates. And operating between Earth and Mars, they're either powerful or suicidal - judging from recent fen rumours Yoriko had repeated to me, I wasn't willing to bet on which one was the case.) "Unlock the weapon controls. My authority."
She flinched, but flipped the necessary switches on the engineering console. "You have weapons, Noah."
"Thank you. Yayoi, where's the Boskonian?" I asked as I examined the tactical display.
"One ship, bearing 12-by-227." Within the turret's arc of fire, then. "Correction - bearing 19-by-219." I saw yet another missile pass in front of the ship. I know some fen don't like me, but somebody really didn't like me.
I checked the ammunition list. Damn it, Kohran had slipped a gravity implosion mine into the stores - that's a 'wavetech munition (assuming that isn't an oxymoron), with all the danger to the user that that implies. Maybe we could use it as a self-destruct charge if things got bad, but I'd bet it wouldn't even be good for that. I looked at what else we had. Railgun slugs, more railgun slugs, ... A-ha, three baby nukes. (Two engineers on staff plus some uranium salvaged from a brace of 1980s- and 1990s-era mundane space probes we had chased down equals what we've codenamed "kaboomite".) I loaded one into the railgun, followed by a half-dozen railgun slugs. "Steady flight, please."
"Aye, sir." Yayoi steadied the 'Blade. I had one shot. I took it. "Back to evasive, Yayoi." Fifteen seconds later, the ship that had opened fire on us went up in a soundless explosion. "Any more?"
After a moment, Yayoi answered, "It doesn't look like it."
"Good. Stand down from combat." I sat down and let out a slow breath, and started shaking; post-combat stress hits me hard.
("Sat down"? The Epsilon Blade's operation stations are patterned after the ship controls in the "Stellvia" anime - they're designed to be operated while standing. On this ship, sitting down is for relaxation, not for work.)
Sora helped me off the command deck and into my stateroom on the lower deck, where I collapsed onto my bed. "Oh, God, I ... I hate having to ... to do that."
"It was them or us."
"How many ... people did ... I just kill?"
"Noah, you didn't have a choice."
"I ... I know. Doesn't ... doesn't make it ... easier."
She turned off the light on her way out.
--------
Docking at Phobos was ridiculous, even with the VIP treatment I received. (Station administrators tend to get preferential treatment when visiting other stations; it's pretty much the only perk to the job.)
Going through station check-in was numbing. I had to fill out quite a few reports and answer even more questions - the two days I thought I was going to spend exploring Phobos with Sora and Yayoi, plus the first day of the Convention, were taken up with the official investigation of our run-in with the Boskonian.
We didn't even get to the Convention proper when I heard someone call my name. I turned to face a Japanese man I'd never met before. "Yes, I'm Noah Scott. How can I help you?"
"I understand you had some trouble on your trip to the convention."
"Word gets around fast, Mr...?"
"My name is Koizumi Itsuki."
--------
Well, that was disquieting. I wasn't the only one who'd been attacked by reavers. (And I wasn't the only one calling them "Boskonians", either, although they were using the term a bit differently than I was. No reason to be surprised - the SSX folks tend to get upset when people call reavers "pirates", and "Doc" Smithians are noticeable out here. Well, they're more noticeable than the Cordwainer Smithians are.) The other attacks had been close to Jupiter or the main Belt - at least, the known attacks had been that far out. If it hadn't been for one of Kohran's Special Kaboomite Warheads, we wouldn't have been able to report, or likely survive, the attack during our trip to Mars.
And according to the SOS people, some Boskonians were running drugs, too. Nasty drugs, from someplace on Venus. (Idly, I wondered whether the DEA's Mr. Scott was involved in this case. He had visited Stellvia a few years ago, and the resulting confusion with our names was a big reason why the command staff's now on a first-name basis with each other and I'm "Commander" to everyone else on the station. Anyway ...)
The existance of Boskonians between Earth and Mars (don't tell me they don't exist; one attacked me) implied the Venusian Boskonians and the Jovian Boskonians might be connected. That meant the SOS-dan needed an auxillary base between Venus and Mars, to find out for sure. An Earthbound base would be too far down the atmosphere and gravity well to be useful. Earth orbit was too crowded. Luna and L4 were controlled by the 'danes. There weren't any bases at L1, L2, or L3, so dropping anything at any of those would be too obvious. That left L5, which meant the Warsie base or the Stellvia, and a 'dane tourist trap / fen trading post would be able to hide SOS traffic better than a pseudo-military base would.
An hour of dickering, interrupted by two hours of live feed of the Opening Ceremonies Speech from the SOS-dan's leader Suzumiya (which wasn't nearly as dry as most such speeches), and SOS had rented an entire floor of the new hotel for the duration. Steady business meant I could give them a reduced rate, they agreed to bring in any special equipment they needed, and they actually seemed to like the idea of being located near Kohran's workshop ... which made me worry.
--------
Con life can be exciting, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, we had to be in the wrong place - a crowded corridor - in order to get to the right place - a panel on do-it-yourself ship and station fortification. We weren't officially on the panel, but I smelled money.
"Hey, you! This Con isn't a place for old guys like you to pick up girls my age!" It was one of those teenaged Hidden Asteroid yahoos, and he was pointing at me.
Yayoi had gone back to the Epsilon Blade to report back to Stellvia and get changed for the costume competition, so it was just Sora and me. It's pretty obvious what the space ninja, and probably quite a few other fen, thought.
I could feel Sora start to shake as she pressed close to my side. "This young woman is one of my crew, not my date. And you just made her cry." (I didn't need to look at Sora to know she was crying; she's very sensitive about how young she looks. At least twice a week, usually more often, I have to interrupt whatever I'm doing to soothe her ruffled feathers. It's cost me a few contracts with the Trekkies, and a lot of goodwill with the Senshi.)
"But ... She looks like ... I didn't mean to ..." Usually, space ninja that age are so amusing when they're flustered. Usually, they didn't just unknowingly insult one of my friends, so I wasn't prepared to give him any slack.
Judging from body language and muttered comments, the crowd around us seemed to be evenly split between "how dare he make her cry?" (mostly "Doc" Smithians and shojo-fen), "she needs to grow a spine" (mostly Heinleiners and Senshi), and "what the hell's blocking traffic?" (fen from every faction). Time to wind this up. I gave the wonderboy two more seconds to apologize to Sora, then said "Let's just go" while offering her a dry handkerchief.
"O...okay." She dried her eyes as we walked past the teenager, who still couldn't figure out what to do.
One of these days, my dislike of hand-to-hand-fighter fen would probably get me into trouble. But today wasn't that day. I hoped.
--------
I saw a shop run by somebody who used to be a business associate a few years ago. I'd asked Sora to get a couple of cans of beer - I don't usually drink, but the barkeepers around here carded everybody, so she'd be "just another adult" - so I decided saying "hello" was worth a try. Besides, it might take my mind off of what the SOS-dan had told me.
"Welcome to Stan's Kwalitee Danegoo... Oh. It's you."
"Hello, Stan. Can I buy you a drink?"
"No."
"C'mon, Stan, that was three and a half years ago, and I paid for everything that was destroyed. Can't you let bygones be bygones?"
Stan glared at me. "Your pet robot..."
"She's not a 'pet'." I glared back at him.
"Fine. Your Oh-So-Special Trusted Assistant," you could hear the capital letters, the way he spat them out, "made me miss deadlines with a lot of fen. My reputation suffered because of her. 'A drink' isn't going to make that go away. Is the bitch here?"
"She's not a 'bitch', either. And, no, Ms. Li is still on the Stellvia."
"Good. At least this Con won't be ruined because of her fulminative approach to life."
'Fulminative'? I didn't know Stan did that much business with the "Doc" Smithians... and is that even a word? "You're exaggerating things. It was one explosion in a clearly-marked weapons testing area."
"In the middle of a Convention parking area!"
"Hey, I paid for the ships that were wrecked because they parked within a hundred kilometers of the test!"
Stan shook his head. "You still think you can solve every problem by throwing money at it, don't you? The rest of us don't live that way, and that's why we don't like you."
That's not true; lots of people like me. The Warsies love me - I'm a source of explosive practice targets, close to their near-Earth base. (That trade almost pays for the damages to the Stellvia whenever Kohran develops her toys.) Stan was just holding a grudge. I hope. "You're sure there's nothing I can do to make things better between us?"
"Go away, Mr. Scott."
At least I tried. Again.
Sora was waiting for me two stalls down the hall. "No luck?"
"No luck. Beer?"
"Here." She handed me one of the cans.
"Thanks. After that talk, I need this..." And I was still worried about what the SOS folks had told me.
--------
The panel turned into a bunfight between the Warsies, the Trekkies, the Senshi, and the Whedonites (in decreasing order of metaphorical "firepower" on hand). Sora and I cut and run while we still could.
We decided to take in the rest of the first round of the Costume Competition. Sora and I never took part in them, but we did enjoy looking at everyone else's outfits.
("Why not"? I didn't have the right body type for cosplay. Sora didn't want to take advantage of looking like herself, and nobody who knew her wanted to recommend any character she looked like - those characters were all young teenagers.)
We got there just in time to see the "Read or Die" cosplayers. This year, there were a half-dozen Nancys, four Anitas, and seven Yomikos, and they were all quite good. (They had to be; for an older show like that one, cosplayers need to go big or go home.)
One of the Yomikos sent a paper airplane into the audience, and it landed right in my lap. Sora looked at it and giggled. I frowned at her. "What?"
"It's for you, Noah."
Huh? Sure enough, it was a note, addressed to me. I took a better look at the Yomiko cosplayer and realized that it was Yayoi with her hair down.
I read the note once she was off-stage: "Noah, I'll be busy for a few hours, so don't wait up for me. Hugs and kisses. Yayoi." This was not good. Most of the fen who knew I had four loyal, attractive, female companions thought I was sleeping with some or all of them. I was, but (by her choice) not with Yayoi. "Hugs and kisses" meant she was in trouble. What kind of trouble could she get into, or find, at a cosplay contest? I thought for a moment, and came up with too many possibilities.
I didn't have any weapons with me between "fists" and "Kohran's Special Kaboomite Warheads" - I was no good with the former, and the latter were too big, and far too dangerous, to use indoors. But if you couldn't find a decent sidearm for sale at a Con, you weren't looking. What's more important was that I had no idea (or, rather, too many ideas, all of which might be wrong) what sort of trouble Yayoi was in, and I was far from the best choice if combat came up. For that matter, I was far from the best choice for investigation; that's Yoriko's specialty, and I had left her in charge back home ... I needed some help.
(Edit for formatting.)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
"Good morning, everyone. Anything of interest overnight?"
The young lady at the communications console - a new employee, I didn't know her name yet - looked up. "Hello, Commander. The Terrestrial circuits are filled with spam, but we also have three requests from 'dane tourist agencies to rent hotel space in the new module."
Conventional wisdom among fen is that 'danes don't like space, but there's a steady tourist business this close to Earth. Adding a separate habitation module with "genuine Venusian diamond panoramic windows" and "genuine NASA life support systems" to the Stellvia was a stroke of genius, despite being a necessity to preserve some of my secrets - it gives me a steady source of 'dane income, which gives me the ability to buy stocks of all the lovely 'dane toys that so many fen enjoy.
The Stellvia? It's named after the station from Ryou Azuki's manga of the same name, of course, although only the comparatively small subset of shojo-fen who like space opera recognize the name without seeing the explanatory plaque beside each airlock. Oh, that wasn't what you meant? Ah... It started small, as such things usually do. When I started this little project, NASA was still launching shuttles with those big fuel tanks. I borrowed an idea from Ben Bova and got NASA to sell me a half-dozen unused main Shuttle fuel tanks. A few fen in NASA towed them up to LEO, where I took delivery of them. Some handwavium and some "elbow grease" got them safe to inhabit, and I towed them to L5 with the Epsilon Blade, where my command staff and I welded them together into a station. Then I moved in; I've rarely left Stellvia except for conventions since 2010.
(The Epsilon Blade? My personal craft, built to my specifications while I was still based on Earth. Winning the biggest lottery prize in all of 2008 let me indulge. It's a two-deck scoutship, named after a couple of friends who died in a car crash before handwavium was discovered - the name has nothing to do with one-up'ing the trekkies, despite the ship looking a lot like one of their Flyers. I'll get back to it later; you wanted to know about the Stellvia...)
That was the Stellvia in 2008. Liberal expenditure on metals and space-trained workers let me build the station up to the six-deck structure it is now, with the aforementioned habitation module being the newest part of the station. (One of these years, the whole thing might even look like the manga "Stellvia".) It's a reasonably-comfortable place for fen to buy 'dane luxury items, 'danes to go "way out into space", and both sides to gawk at the other (with the express understanding that anyone who gawks is expected to be gawked at in return - I often have to hire down-on-their-luck fen to be gawked at). There aren't many wavtech devices installed, aside from the defenses and gravity tech. (Yes, gravity tech. I've never seen anyone else use 'wavium that way, although I've heard stories ... Most of those stories name the Professor, though, so I'll believe it when I see it.)
"Thank you. Anything on the fen channels?"
The communications staffer looked at her display. "There's something here about a convention ..."
"Convention?" I interrupted. "That's top priority on the fen circuits; you should have started with that. Show it to me, please."
"I'm sorry, sir." She copied the e-mail to my hand computer, where I read it... or tried to read it. For the love of Belldandy, who wrote this? I toggled the inner station's all-call. "Command staff to main operations, please. I repeat: command staff to main operations, please."
The Stellvia's command staff is a bit odd - it's a tightly-guarded secret (which means that only half of fandom knows it) that it's made up of AI androids. Bribing Ryou Azuki and Kozuke Fujishima to share all of their notes, and licence a few likenesses and the name "Stellvia", wasn't too expensive - writing manga doesn't pay that well, apparently. In exchange for the quarter-million dollars that cost, I got everything I needed to get personality simulations coded and character likenesses sculpted. That cost a few million dollars... I'm still not sure why only female characters who need to wear glasses (three of Mr. Fujishima's, one of Ms. Azuki's) were the only ones to "wake up" when I installed the solid-state 'wavium in their bodies, but they're a good core crew who are unswervingly loyal to me. Their quirks, besides the one about needing glasses, were minor, and I could live with them. They had to live with them, after all. (And I never, ever, mention the robots that didn't "wake up" around them.) There are four of them - engineers Sora Hasegawa and Kohran Li, security specialist Yoriko Nikaido, and pilot Yayoi Fujisawa.
"Yoriko, does this make any sense to you?" I handed her the convention e-mail. She read and re-read the announcement while the rest of the command staff arrived.
Finally, she looked up. "It's a convention announcement."
"I figured out that much on my own." And if Yoriko didn't know anything about it, it must have come out of the blue. Yoriko hears about everything ... and can't keep any of it secret, which is why I had the hotel built as a separate section. "Any ideas why there's a convention announcement at this time of year?"
Everyone shook their heads.
I sighed. "Only one way to find out, then. Ms. Hasegawa, Ms. Fujisawa, please prep the Epsilon Blade for launch in two hours. Ms. Nikaido, you're in charge until we return."
"Understood, sir," replied Yoriko.
"Stay out of the new module. And don't pester the paying guests."
"Oh, that's no fun ..."
--------
"Noah, why are we going to Phobos?"
"It's a convention, Sora. We can't afford to be left out of a con; who knows what rules might be passed that would unduly affect us if we weren't there to object. Remember the first official convention, two years ago?"
My chief engineer shook her head. "That isn't what I meant. I know why you're going - it's business. Why are Yayoi and I going?"
Yayoi looked away from the Epsilon Blade's pilot console. "I assume I'm along to fly the ship."
"True," I smiled, "but that isn't the only reason. We've all heard the rumours about reaver activity; I want my best pilot and my best engineer with me so that this ship gets to Phobos and back." Sora blushed at the compliment; Yayoi didn't seem to react. "More importantly, I enjoy your company."
Sora was about to reply when the ship shook. "Impacts on the force screen, Commander!" shouted Yayoi.
"Evasive!" But Yayoi was already spinning the ship on two of its axes at the same time while applying random thrust, if the view out the front window as anything to go by. "What's going on?"
"We've taken hits near the engines from kinetic-kill weapons, possibly missiles without warheads. They would have disabled us if we didn't have the screens up." Score one for paranoia... Amongst the gadgets installed on the Epsilon Blade was the most powerful handwavium forcescreen my go-betweens could buy from "Schrodinger" Katz.
I didn't want a fight. Despite my reputation, I don't like resorting to violence. I walked over to the ship's second control station and toggled the transmitter. "Unidentified ship, this is the Epsilon Blade out of L5 station Stellvia. Please cease fire and state your terms." There was no reply. "I say again, please cease fire and state your terms." Their only answer was another missile across our starboard side. I switched the transmitter off. "Yayoi, can we outrun them?"
"I doubt it, Commander."
Damn, no choice but to add another line to my reputation... "Sora, since they refuse to answer, designate them 'Boskonian'." (That's our code-term for violent pirates. And operating between Earth and Mars, they're either powerful or suicidal - judging from recent fen rumours Yoriko had repeated to me, I wasn't willing to bet on which one was the case.) "Unlock the weapon controls. My authority."
She flinched, but flipped the necessary switches on the engineering console. "You have weapons, Noah."
"Thank you. Yayoi, where's the Boskonian?" I asked as I examined the tactical display.
"One ship, bearing 12-by-227." Within the turret's arc of fire, then. "Correction - bearing 19-by-219." I saw yet another missile pass in front of the ship. I know some fen don't like me, but somebody really didn't like me.
I checked the ammunition list. Damn it, Kohran had slipped a gravity implosion mine into the stores - that's a 'wavetech munition (assuming that isn't an oxymoron), with all the danger to the user that that implies. Maybe we could use it as a self-destruct charge if things got bad, but I'd bet it wouldn't even be good for that. I looked at what else we had. Railgun slugs, more railgun slugs, ... A-ha, three baby nukes. (Two engineers on staff plus some uranium salvaged from a brace of 1980s- and 1990s-era mundane space probes we had chased down equals what we've codenamed "kaboomite".) I loaded one into the railgun, followed by a half-dozen railgun slugs. "Steady flight, please."
"Aye, sir." Yayoi steadied the 'Blade. I had one shot. I took it. "Back to evasive, Yayoi." Fifteen seconds later, the ship that had opened fire on us went up in a soundless explosion. "Any more?"
After a moment, Yayoi answered, "It doesn't look like it."
"Good. Stand down from combat." I sat down and let out a slow breath, and started shaking; post-combat stress hits me hard.
("Sat down"? The Epsilon Blade's operation stations are patterned after the ship controls in the "Stellvia" anime - they're designed to be operated while standing. On this ship, sitting down is for relaxation, not for work.)
Sora helped me off the command deck and into my stateroom on the lower deck, where I collapsed onto my bed. "Oh, God, I ... I hate having to ... to do that."
"It was them or us."
"How many ... people did ... I just kill?"
"Noah, you didn't have a choice."
"I ... I know. Doesn't ... doesn't make it ... easier."
She turned off the light on her way out.
--------
Docking at Phobos was ridiculous, even with the VIP treatment I received. (Station administrators tend to get preferential treatment when visiting other stations; it's pretty much the only perk to the job.)
Going through station check-in was numbing. I had to fill out quite a few reports and answer even more questions - the two days I thought I was going to spend exploring Phobos with Sora and Yayoi, plus the first day of the Convention, were taken up with the official investigation of our run-in with the Boskonian.
We didn't even get to the Convention proper when I heard someone call my name. I turned to face a Japanese man I'd never met before. "Yes, I'm Noah Scott. How can I help you?"
"I understand you had some trouble on your trip to the convention."
"Word gets around fast, Mr...?"
"My name is Koizumi Itsuki."
--------
Well, that was disquieting. I wasn't the only one who'd been attacked by reavers. (And I wasn't the only one calling them "Boskonians", either, although they were using the term a bit differently than I was. No reason to be surprised - the SSX folks tend to get upset when people call reavers "pirates", and "Doc" Smithians are noticeable out here. Well, they're more noticeable than the Cordwainer Smithians are.) The other attacks had been close to Jupiter or the main Belt - at least, the known attacks had been that far out. If it hadn't been for one of Kohran's Special Kaboomite Warheads, we wouldn't have been able to report, or likely survive, the attack during our trip to Mars.
And according to the SOS people, some Boskonians were running drugs, too. Nasty drugs, from someplace on Venus. (Idly, I wondered whether the DEA's Mr. Scott was involved in this case. He had visited Stellvia a few years ago, and the resulting confusion with our names was a big reason why the command staff's now on a first-name basis with each other and I'm "Commander" to everyone else on the station. Anyway ...)
The existance of Boskonians between Earth and Mars (don't tell me they don't exist; one attacked me) implied the Venusian Boskonians and the Jovian Boskonians might be connected. That meant the SOS-dan needed an auxillary base between Venus and Mars, to find out for sure. An Earthbound base would be too far down the atmosphere and gravity well to be useful. Earth orbit was too crowded. Luna and L4 were controlled by the 'danes. There weren't any bases at L1, L2, or L3, so dropping anything at any of those would be too obvious. That left L5, which meant the Warsie base or the Stellvia, and a 'dane tourist trap / fen trading post would be able to hide SOS traffic better than a pseudo-military base would.
An hour of dickering, interrupted by two hours of live feed of the Opening Ceremonies Speech from the SOS-dan's leader Suzumiya (which wasn't nearly as dry as most such speeches), and SOS had rented an entire floor of the new hotel for the duration. Steady business meant I could give them a reduced rate, they agreed to bring in any special equipment they needed, and they actually seemed to like the idea of being located near Kohran's workshop ... which made me worry.
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Con life can be exciting, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, we had to be in the wrong place - a crowded corridor - in order to get to the right place - a panel on do-it-yourself ship and station fortification. We weren't officially on the panel, but I smelled money.
"Hey, you! This Con isn't a place for old guys like you to pick up girls my age!" It was one of those teenaged Hidden Asteroid yahoos, and he was pointing at me.
Yayoi had gone back to the Epsilon Blade to report back to Stellvia and get changed for the costume competition, so it was just Sora and me. It's pretty obvious what the space ninja, and probably quite a few other fen, thought.
I could feel Sora start to shake as she pressed close to my side. "This young woman is one of my crew, not my date. And you just made her cry." (I didn't need to look at Sora to know she was crying; she's very sensitive about how young she looks. At least twice a week, usually more often, I have to interrupt whatever I'm doing to soothe her ruffled feathers. It's cost me a few contracts with the Trekkies, and a lot of goodwill with the Senshi.)
"But ... She looks like ... I didn't mean to ..." Usually, space ninja that age are so amusing when they're flustered. Usually, they didn't just unknowingly insult one of my friends, so I wasn't prepared to give him any slack.
Judging from body language and muttered comments, the crowd around us seemed to be evenly split between "how dare he make her cry?" (mostly "Doc" Smithians and shojo-fen), "she needs to grow a spine" (mostly Heinleiners and Senshi), and "what the hell's blocking traffic?" (fen from every faction). Time to wind this up. I gave the wonderboy two more seconds to apologize to Sora, then said "Let's just go" while offering her a dry handkerchief.
"O...okay." She dried her eyes as we walked past the teenager, who still couldn't figure out what to do.
One of these days, my dislike of hand-to-hand-fighter fen would probably get me into trouble. But today wasn't that day. I hoped.
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I saw a shop run by somebody who used to be a business associate a few years ago. I'd asked Sora to get a couple of cans of beer - I don't usually drink, but the barkeepers around here carded everybody, so she'd be "just another adult" - so I decided saying "hello" was worth a try. Besides, it might take my mind off of what the SOS-dan had told me.
"Welcome to Stan's Kwalitee Danegoo... Oh. It's you."
"Hello, Stan. Can I buy you a drink?"
"No."
"C'mon, Stan, that was three and a half years ago, and I paid for everything that was destroyed. Can't you let bygones be bygones?"
Stan glared at me. "Your pet robot..."
"She's not a 'pet'." I glared back at him.
"Fine. Your Oh-So-Special Trusted Assistant," you could hear the capital letters, the way he spat them out, "made me miss deadlines with a lot of fen. My reputation suffered because of her. 'A drink' isn't going to make that go away. Is the bitch here?"
"She's not a 'bitch', either. And, no, Ms. Li is still on the Stellvia."
"Good. At least this Con won't be ruined because of her fulminative approach to life."
'Fulminative'? I didn't know Stan did that much business with the "Doc" Smithians... and is that even a word? "You're exaggerating things. It was one explosion in a clearly-marked weapons testing area."
"In the middle of a Convention parking area!"
"Hey, I paid for the ships that were wrecked because they parked within a hundred kilometers of the test!"
Stan shook his head. "You still think you can solve every problem by throwing money at it, don't you? The rest of us don't live that way, and that's why we don't like you."
That's not true; lots of people like me. The Warsies love me - I'm a source of explosive practice targets, close to their near-Earth base. (That trade almost pays for the damages to the Stellvia whenever Kohran develops her toys.) Stan was just holding a grudge. I hope. "You're sure there's nothing I can do to make things better between us?"
"Go away, Mr. Scott."
At least I tried. Again.
Sora was waiting for me two stalls down the hall. "No luck?"
"No luck. Beer?"
"Here." She handed me one of the cans.
"Thanks. After that talk, I need this..." And I was still worried about what the SOS folks had told me.
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The panel turned into a bunfight between the Warsies, the Trekkies, the Senshi, and the Whedonites (in decreasing order of metaphorical "firepower" on hand). Sora and I cut and run while we still could.
We decided to take in the rest of the first round of the Costume Competition. Sora and I never took part in them, but we did enjoy looking at everyone else's outfits.
("Why not"? I didn't have the right body type for cosplay. Sora didn't want to take advantage of looking like herself, and nobody who knew her wanted to recommend any character she looked like - those characters were all young teenagers.)
We got there just in time to see the "Read or Die" cosplayers. This year, there were a half-dozen Nancys, four Anitas, and seven Yomikos, and they were all quite good. (They had to be; for an older show like that one, cosplayers need to go big or go home.)
One of the Yomikos sent a paper airplane into the audience, and it landed right in my lap. Sora looked at it and giggled. I frowned at her. "What?"
"It's for you, Noah."
Huh? Sure enough, it was a note, addressed to me. I took a better look at the Yomiko cosplayer and realized that it was Yayoi with her hair down.
I read the note once she was off-stage: "Noah, I'll be busy for a few hours, so don't wait up for me. Hugs and kisses. Yayoi." This was not good. Most of the fen who knew I had four loyal, attractive, female companions thought I was sleeping with some or all of them. I was, but (by her choice) not with Yayoi. "Hugs and kisses" meant she was in trouble. What kind of trouble could she get into, or find, at a cosplay contest? I thought for a moment, and came up with too many possibilities.
I didn't have any weapons with me between "fists" and "Kohran's Special Kaboomite Warheads" - I was no good with the former, and the latter were too big, and far too dangerous, to use indoors. But if you couldn't find a decent sidearm for sale at a Con, you weren't looking. What's more important was that I had no idea (or, rather, too many ideas, all of which might be wrong) what sort of trouble Yayoi was in, and I was far from the best choice if combat came up. For that matter, I was far from the best choice for investigation; that's Yoriko's specialty, and I had left her in charge back home ... I needed some help.
(Edit for formatting.)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012