Pew! Pew! - The Quest for More Pew! Read online

Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer

  The galaxy’s in crisis, and Carrie Hatchett’s the last person on Earth who should be fixing it.

  Carrie is a low-achieving daydreamer. After providing a good home for her butt-ugly dog and psychotic cat, her biggest challenge in life is to avoid being fired, again.

  But a strange green mist sucks her beneath her kitchen sink, and an unusual clerical error leads to an offer she foolishly doesn’t refuse.

  The Transgalactic Council hire her to settle a conflict between the mechanical placktoids and the mysterious oootoon.

  Carrie must overcome her personal weaknesses and, for the first time in her life, succeed in her job, to uncover a threat to the entire galaxy.

  Read the series now:

  Download Mission Improbable from your favorite retailer: https://books2read.com/u/4NRRkz

  Buy the box set of books 1 – 3 and save: https://books2read.com/u/49PP8Y

  About the Author

  J.J. Green was born in London’s East End within the sound of the church bells of St. Mary Le Bow, Cheapside, which makes her a bona fide Cockney. She first left the U.K. as a young adult and has lived in Australia and Laos. She currently lives in Taipei, Taiwan, where she entertains the locals with her efforts to learn Mandarin.

  Writers she admires include Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Douglas Adams, Connie Willis and Ann Leckie. Green writes science fiction, fantasy, weird, dark and humorous tales, and her work has appeared in Lamplight, Perihelion, Saturday Night Reader and other magazines and websites.

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  Crash

  by James S. Aaron

  Mecha dolphins, battle bears, and sword-swinging Corgis fight to the death in Cruithne Station's pirate e-sports scene… until a hacker comes along and makes the Crash battles go boom.

  Life ain't easy for a young thug on Cruithne Station, pirate haven between Earth and the Mars Protectorate.

  Almost killed during a job gone wrong, Ngoba Starl is kicked out, chewed up, beat down and desperate for a new score. Without cash, he's getting spaced for sure.

  Starl finds a job down at the Crash field, where players battle to the death as giant avatars. Battle bears, mecha-dolphins, drunken barbarians, toxic blobs and sword-swinging Corgis all fight for victory while the crowd screams, heckles and drinks themselves unconscious.

  Behind the games are the bookies. Behind the bookies are the crime syndicates.

  Behind the syndicates is a hacker using subtle manipulation to throw the games and clear millions. Finding himself on the inside, Starl might get a piece of the action.

  Or he might take a plasma blast to the head.

  Ngoba Starl needs to be clever, fast and sly to make it out alive. Damn it, he better look good, too.

  Nobody's gonna cry for another young thug sent headfirst out an airlock, even if he was wearing a bowtie.

  1

  STELLAR DATE: 07.21.2958 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Lowspin Docks

  REGION: Cruithne

  The drone guard shot past where Starl and Zanda crouched in a service alcove, filling the air in front of it with barely visible laser beams that burned the concrete walls. As soon as the blocky thing was past, wiry Starl rolled into the tunnel and came up on one knee. He had about two seconds to steady the shoulder-fired missile launcher before the drone spotted him with its rear sensors.

  “Ngoba!” Zanda hissed. “Safety!”

  Starl dropped the heavy tube to glare at his friend. “I got the safety. That’s the first damn thing I–”

  The drone whirled on the sounds of their voices, its bulk filling the tight corridor like a cubic sea anemone. Two lurid red sensors in its front panel glowed like angry eyes.

  “Aim!” Zanda shouted. “Ngoba, aim!”

  Starl ignored his friend’s frantic instructions and squeezed the blast tube against his neck. His fingers scrambled over the blocky trigger mechanism before he found the right combination of buttons and mashed on the controls. A rumbling whoosh filled the tunnel, followed almost immediately by an explosion that sent orange waves of flame rolling back toward Starl. He smelled burning hair and figured he was going to lose his beard and eyebrows. He vaguely remembered dropping the missile tube.

  *****

  Lying on his back, ears ringing as he squeezed his eyes closed against the stinging smoke, Ngoba Starl wondered if he’d made a mistake somewhere.

  Not recently. They’d definitely fucked up recently. His best friend Riggs Zanda had absolutely made a mistake with the cargo hold’s security system, activating the overwatch and its angry drone, which must have been surplus TSF from the amount of death-making hardware it had been packing.

  Before that. Long before that.

  Was it his fault he’d been born on Cruithne Station, the asshole of the universe? Was it his fault he lived in a junked freighter with a bunch of kid squatters, doing work for a cruel woman they called Mama Chala? And was she cruel or did she just have high standards? Was it his fault they weren’t old enough for the surgery needed for Link implantation, so Zanda had to hack like a savage?

  Unable to hold his breath any longer, Starl coughed. His throat burned.

  Rolling onto his stomach, he tried to peer through his eyelashes, eyes still stinging like he’d been dunked in acid. He pulled at his beard, thick for a seventeen-year-old but still natty. He still had his curly hair, too, though his hand came back covered in dust.

  “Zanda,” Starl whispered. “You all right?”

  “No,” came a whimpering response. “I can’t believe you used the missile launcher.”

  “What are you talking about? What was I supposed to do?”

  “You realize the over-pressure alone could have blown the cargo block off into space? What would we do then? We’d be sucking hard vacuum.”

  “I told you when I brought the missile that I might fire the missile.”

  “Might is a long way from pulling the trigger.”

  “I aimed it land-side. Nothing was getting blown out into space.”

  “Over-pressure, Ngoba. Over-pressure. You need to learn about this shit if you’re going to live to see twenty.”

  Starl shook his head, feeling more stubborn the longer the conversation continued. “You knew I was going to fire the missile.”

  Zanda sneezed. “Your missile shit all over me. That happened, too. I’m covered in propellant.”

  “Serves you right.” Starl wheezed a laugh but only started coughing again. “Do you hear the drone? I can’t see anything.”

  “It’s dead.”

  “You’re sure it’s dead? How can you see anything?”

  “I don’t have to. Its control frequencies are all cold.”

  “You can see that?” Starl said, letting his head fall against the warm concrete. The floor was gritty through his beard.

  “I can see it right here. Just like I knew the thing was coming after us. If I hadn’t warned you about the drone, we’d be dead right now.”

  “So you triggered the defensive perimeter, waking the drone so it could attack us, but I should thank you because you warned me in time?”

  “How doesn’t that make sense?”

  Zanda groaned. “We better get back down there. We need to get something out of this job.”

  “You think we have time?” Starl asked “The overwatch system will have notified somebody.”

  “Didn’t you send the vacuum breach alarm?”

  “Yes, I sent the damn alarm.”

  “Then they’ll think it’s a meteorite strike or a drunk pilot or something.”

  “I wish we had damn EV suits,” Starl said. “We’re too close to the edge of the ring here.”

  “The ring is held on Cruithne with jizz and spit and th
e gravity created by all us assholes.”

  “I like that,” Starl said. “Held on by jizz and spit. I’m going to use that, brother.” He pushed himself to his knees. The smoke was starting to clear and he was able to make out bits of the drone scattered all down the corridor in front of them, mixed in with broken pieces of concrete from a collapsed section of the ceiling.

  Zanda shook his head and his hair became slightly more brown, dust filling the air around him. He coughed. He had narrow green eyes in a squashed head that reminded Starl of an oblong lemon.

  “Come on,” Starl said. Without waiting, he turned to jog back down the narrow service corridor toward the airlock to the exterior cargo hold. He was surprised to find they had only run about a hundred meters. It had seemed like a full kilometer when the drone was howling behind them.

  Zanda pushed past him at the airlock to check its control panel. Starl watched over his short friend’s shoulder as he flashed through control menus until he had access to its administration protocols. This was where they had been standing before when the door slid open to reveal the red eyes of the attack drone.

  Starl tensed as the door slid open a second time, even though he knew there was nothing left inside that could hurt them.

  “Quit breathing down my neck,” Zanda complained.

  “Quit taking your sweet time about this. We’ve probably got private security on the way.”

  “I turned off all the external reporting.”

  “Just like you turned off the overwatch security system, yeah?”

  Zanda growled as a breath of cold air blew back over them. With the door open, he stepped into the cramped interior of the shipping container.

  “Wait here,” Zanda said, craning his neck to look around. “It’s too tight in here for both of us to go poking around.”

  “Good sign,” Starl said. “Lots of freight.” He patted himself down, feeling for rips in is shirt and pants. He only had one set of clothes and took a lot of pride in his appearance, something the other squatters all teased him ruthlessly for.

  “Damn it,” Zanda cursed from inside the container, hidden by cargo crates.

  “What is it?”

  “This damn thing is full of expired flour.”

  “No,” Starl said, blinking. “You said the manifest showed protein substitute.”

  “I know what it used to say.” Zanda barked in pain as he hit his head on something inside the container.

  “That makes no sense,” Starl said. “Why would somebody set up an attack drone to guard a bunch of flour? Are you telling me I carried that missile all this way– wasted Chala’s missile, damn it – for a bunch of flour.”

  “Shut up, Ngoba. I’m looking. It was all cover for the weapons drop, but the regular contents should match the manifest.”

  “You better look harder.”

  Disregarding Zanda’s command to wait at the airlock, Starl pushed his way into the container, squeezing between the haphazardly stacked crates. His breath blew in front of him in white clouds. Inside, he found Zanda crouched next to a wide crate with its lid hanging open.

  “This was it,” Zanda said as Starl climbed up beside him. “This was the drop point. This should be full of Mars Protectorate handguns.”

  “Does the crate have a control panel? Any access records?”

  Zanda shot him an irritated glance. “Do you see an access panel? It’s a dumb crate.”

  Starl moved the lid, listening as the hinges squeaked. He stared into the empty crate for a minute as he started to shiver, a reminder they were standing in an uninsulated metal box with hard vacuum a few meters away. Something about the bottom of the crate didn’t look right, so he leaned in to tap it.

  “It’s got a hollow bottom,” Starl said.

  Zanda shook his head as if he didn’t understand, so Starl shouldered him out of the way and reached down into the crate with both hands. He pressed on one side of the crate’s bottom and laughed when it moved easily. Pulling the alloy plate to one side, he found two pistols lying on their sides.

  “That’s it?” Zanda complained. “Two crap handguns?”

  “Have you looked at them? How do you know they’re crap?”

  “They’re crap. We’re screwed. Mama Chala's going to kick us out of the Squat.”

  Starl pulled the pistols out of the crate and let the false bottom fall back into place. A little cloud of dust floated up as it fell. He handed the second pistol to Zanda and turned his over in his hands. It was a Terran Space Force standard-issue pulse pistol with no bio-lock.

  “These are pretty good, Zanda,” he said. “I’d rather have one of these than that missile tube.”

  Zanda shrugged. “You take it. I’m trying to figure out what we’re going to tell Mama Chala. We can’t show up with just these things. We'll be popping zits off her back for days.”

  “Because we don’t listen,” Starl said automatically, mimicking one of Mama Chala’s speeches.

  “Because we don’t listen,” Zanda agreed. He sighed.

  Starl slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on. If we’re going to get fucked, we might as well get it over with.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want to get fucked.”

  “Then find us a new score so we’ve got some cash for rent.”

  “This was the only thing I could find.” Zanda slammed the lid of the crate closed and collapsed back on his heels, shoulders slumped. “We’re screwed, Ngoba. We’re going to go back there and she’s going to tell us we’re too old, we’re not kids anymore.” He shuddered. “Or she’s going to make me snuggle with her. I know she’s going to.”

  Starl put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and pushed the second pistol into his hands. “I’ve got your back, Zanda. Don’t worry about that. We’ll find someone a little more age appropriate to harass you. How’s that?” He grinned but his friend ignored him.

  Zanda looked down at the pistol. “I guess we could roll a tourist down in Night Park.”

  “You know I don’t like doing that. Bad karma.”

  “Karma’s going to kill us,” Zanda complained.

  Starl jammed his pistol in his belt and climbed to his feet. “At least we’ll be mostly good people. You let me talk to Mama Chala. I’ll explain the situation.”

  “No snuggling,” Zanda said. “I’m not going to do it.”

  “No snuggling,” Starl agreed. “Hey now, how about this? Let’s catch some Crash before we head back. That’ll get your mind off this mess.”

  “We don’t have any money to bet. Nobody’s going to take contraband TSF hardware.”

  “We don’t need to bet, my friend. We enjoy Crash for the pure spirit of the sport.”

  Zanda groaned. He held the pistol up as if he expected Starl to take it back, then finally pushed it into his waistband as well. “This thing pokes me,” he complained.

  “Builds character,” Starl said. “Come on.”

  2

  The Crash field was in and old hangar down by Night Park. They had to wind their way among the stalls and crowds that filled the park’s bazaar, taking the long way around to avoid the fountain in the middle where the gray parrots hung out cursing at passersby.

  “Squawk! Hey dummy,” they heard in the distance. “Hey, hey, dummy!”

  Throughout its long history as a sanctuary for smuggling, various entrepreneurs had tried to start more respectable tourist attractions on the station. Because, Starl figured, even pirates end up with families eventually. Most ventures had failed, from the amusement parks that were now red-light districts, to the theme restaurants that had become burned-out drug dens.

  The fountain at Night Park had somehow continued to exist on its own momentum, maybe because it was protected by the huge open-air bazaar and provided one of the few open spaces for people to eat, but mostly through the protection of the gray parrots and their crow underlings, who harangued anyone they didn’t like, sang to children, squawked puns and stole crumbs from picnicking families.
>
  “You’ve got a funny face, squawk!” shouted one parrot, and fifty others would take up the call: “Funny face! Funny face!”

  “Golden— retriever,” another parrot called quickly. “Squawk! Your daddy was a golden re— treever!”

  The fountain itself was a wide, low-walled circle where, conceivably people could sit if they weren’t afraid of the white streamers of bird shit falling from the concrete “tree” in the middle of the fountain. A central concrete pole jutted up from the bubbling water, spiked with hundreds of branches that were covered in birds, from crows with thick black beaks and intently watching eyes, to sparrows, scrub jays, starlings, finches and ultimately the parrots at the top. The parrots didn’t like sitting in such exposed areas and were usually out among the stalls, bothering merchants as they perched inside their canopies and squawked abuse.

  “Squawk! You’re as pretty as mud, pretty as mud.”

  The most interesting thing about the parrots, to Starl at least, was that they named themselves. There were plenty of urban legends about how the gray parrots of Night Park had escaped from some bio experiment seven hundred years ago and taken up residence at the fountain. Starl didn’t believe it but it was fun to scare the younger kids back at the squat with stories of mind-controlling parrots who would invade their dreams. As a little boy, the parrots had represented freedom in a place where everyone was a prisoner, whether they knew it or not.

  “Hey, Zanda,” Starl asked as they walked past the edge of the fountain.

  Zanda was eyeing a booth with every type of knife imaginable, from tiny razors to serrated blades a meter long. “What?”

  “I think my conscience is a gray parrot.”

  Zanda shot Starl an irritated glance, brown eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Whenever I’m about to do something I know is wrong, I hear a parrot squawking at me.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “It’s very effective.”