“We come in peace” is what we told the anoza when human explorers first encountered them, but you would have to ask the anoza how that worked for them. They would tell you fast and quick that humans were cast into the outer darkness because of the evil in our hearts. It didn’t take them long to figure that out when we left the blood of four innocents on their hands. In fact, we pretty much convinced them of it by trying to hide the evil that was done. Union Fleet flew an unmarked ship into space docks after the Corporate War, intending to secretly scrap it out, intending to get rid of the evidence. A time-space distorted Tesseract had killed its crew of humans, or so they thought. Or, was that just the rationalization they needed to hide their shame?

By the end of the Corporate War, Dallas Blake had lost everything: his wife, his daughter, his whole family. He was a man in need of far more than just a new beginning. What Dallas needed was a resurrection. Dallas went to the Union Fleet space docks to buy a war surplus scout-class ship. Instead, he unknowingly buys the Tesseract. It does not take Dallas long to find out that its crew of artificials seems way more human than they should be and every bit as much in need of a resurrection as Dallas.

Dallas Blake is outworlder to the nines and ready for whatever life throws at him, except maybe for Mariah. Despite the fact that she is extremely smart and multi-talented, she can drive a sane man crazy and frequently does. And, oh, by the way, did I mention that Mariah is techno? Mariah is but one of the mysteries of the ship once called Tesseract, now named the Five Moons.

But no one was cutting Dallas any breaks. The ship’s alien technology and artificial life forms are the mysteries that he must solve as the action-packed rescue of Emma from more than just the mercenaries leads Dallas and the crew of the Five Moons into danger.

Number 2 on Amazon July 21, 2021

Please enjoy the SAMPLE CHAPTERS below.

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Now available in Audio Book format on Audible.com, Amazon.com, and the Apple iTunes Store.

Reader’s Favorite Rated Five Moons: Resurrection a Five Star Read!

Reviewed by Paul Johnson for Readers’ Favorite…
“I have always been a fan of good space opera. Five Moons: Resurrection by Bill Parker is very good space opera. The author has created a superb cast of characters, human and non-human, with entertaining and witty interactions. The plot, while standard space opera, has enough new elements to make it quite enjoyable. The dialogue is first rate, particularly between the non-humans. This story actually contains it all; drama, adventure, romance, and danger. I look forward to reading the next installment of the adventures of Captain Dallas Blake and the crew of the Five Moons. Well done.”
Read their entire review: Readers’ Favorites review of Five Moons: Resurrection

Kindle Version (eBook)
Print Length: 161 pages
Publisher: Five Moons Publications; 2 edition (July 9, 2020)
Publication Date: July 9, 2020
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B08CS35VL6

Amazon Paperback
Series: Five Moons (Book 1)
Paperback: 183 pages
Publisher: Independently published (July 9, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 979-8664958607
ASIN: B08CPBJY2B
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches

Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 5 hours and 59 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: William P. Parker
Audible.com Release Date: April 20, 2018
Language: English
ASIN: B07CJQ5LWJ

Somehow, Amazon screwed up and left the original Double Dragon paperback on their system. Click the picture to find it.

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

Prologue

I am he who stands in the center of Five Moons’ shadows. My word is faithful and true. Clay of Earth did come in peace… or so they told us at the time. In peace, indeed, they came, but evil trailed behind them like a foul stench. It overcame their good intentions. It left the blood of four innocents on my hands.

***

Captain Michael Jacobi wore a solemn face for the shuttle ride back to the Union Fast Attack Cruiser, Timequake. He made his way briskly to the Captain’s office and shut the door.

“Admiral Omori,” he commanded the wall-sized 3D display.

“Working…,” it responded. Captain Jacobi took a deep breath and set his mind as the silence closed in all around him until he could hear his own heartbeat.

The 3-D display suddenly changed to Admiral Omori’s face.

“Well?” Admiral Omori simply asked Captain Jacobi.

“It’s much worse than we thought,” Jacobi began.

“Oh, come now. How could that possibly be?”

“When I arrived on-scene, I couldn’t even recognize the ship it had been so badly distorted in time-space, but that is not the worst news,” Jacobi reported. “The Anoza had arrived ahead of me. They were trying to save the crew.”

“Oh shit. We can’t have that,” Admiral Omori growled at Jacobi coldly. “We cannot be left with witnesses.”

“The human crew all died,” Jacobi told the Admiral.

“Oh? Well, I guess that settles it then,” Admiral Omori concluded.

“No, it doesn’t, not at all. That’s what I have been trying to tell you. The damned arrogant anoza have already moved their essences into the AI computers onboard to save them. Now, what do I do?”

“The anoza have no jurisdiction on a Union Fleet vessel,” Admiral Omori told Jacobi. “You march right back over there and take control of that ship right now.”

“Then what? What am I to do from there?”

“I don’t care. Fly the damned ship into the nearest star. Get rid of the evidence at all cost. That is what we sent you out there to do. So, damned well do it.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Captain Jacobi replied with a salute.

Admiral Omori returned his salute just before the screen dissolved.

Captain Jacobi took in a deep breath and let out a long sigh. His orders were clearly set in his mind as he took the shuttle back over to the damaged ship. This was never meant to be a rescue mission. He arrived to find Aeyo, the anoza woman in charge, at the Captain’s workstation watching the video logs of the ship’s final moments. She turned sharply to Jacobi.

“You jumped this ship remotely!” she accused Jacobi. “You knew exactly what was wrong, and you jumped the ship anyway. You killed these humans by your own stubborn refusal to listen to us. You killed your own people! That was cold-blooded murder!”

“What are you doing?” Jacobi demanded to know.

“I am beginning the process to restore them,” Aeyo told him.

“Oh no, you are not!” Jacobi insisted. “This is a human ship, and we don’t believe in all of your Anoza nonsense. I will not have my dead comrades desecrated by any such thing.”

“So, now you are condemning them all to a final death!” Aeyo all but yelled back at him, outraged that what Jacobi was doing now was even worse.

“This is a Union Fleet vessel. I have jurisdiction here. You do not. So, I am ordering you to clean up your equipment and leave.”

Aeyo looked at Jacobi defiantly for a long second while she secretly sought further orders.

“It will take me some time to remove my equipment and people,” she relented but was obviously unhappy with the orders she had been given.

“Fine. Please do that,” Jacobi told her.

Aeyo walked off, obviously upset but now intent upon what she must do. Captain Jacobi sat in the Captain’s seat on the bridge, intent now on seeing to it that the anoza cleaned up and left.

Several hours later, when Captain Jacobi’s patience was beyond its limits, he walked briskly back through the ship, looking for the anoza but could not find them anywhere. Had they silently left? He had heard no shuttles come nor go. He looked quickly at the engineering main display to find that there was a single human life sign left on the ship — his.

[What happened to the Anoza ship?] Jacobi queried the Timequake bridge across the network.

[It disappeared,] the Captain told Jacobi. [It simply disappeared.]

[Okay. Then, please send my crew over here.]

Three men arrived by shuttle ten minutes later.

“Dan, I have to know if this vessel is spaceworthy,” Captain Jacobi told his highly qualified starship engineer. Dan headed right for engineering.

Mike went right to the bridge and took the pilot’s seat. Sam took over the Science Officer’s workstation to begin running checks on all of his systems.

“I need to know if we can still fly this ship,” Captain Jacobi told them all.

“Mike, lay in a course for the nearest star.”

Mike looked questioningly at Captain Jacobi.

“This ship has already killed one crew. Union Fleet will not have it kill another. We need to destroy this alien half-breed ship before it does. Set course for the nearest star.”

Mike began work on that.

“Engineering is ready to voyage, Captain,” Dan reported to the bridge over a window on the main display. “All fusion reactors and engines are nominal. I can’t find anything wrong.”

“That is certainly good news,” Captain Jacobi said out loud.

“Sorry, Captain,” Mike finally reported. “The ship refuses all commands to fly it into a star. I tried several stars and a black hole, but no,” Mike reported. “Then I tried to just send it off into the void, but it refused that course, too.”

“Well then, what course will it accept?” Captain Jacobi asked him.

That got Mike thinking and trying a few different things.

“The last course I can find in the logs was from the space docs on Etron,” Mike told the Captain several minutes later. “It accepted the return course and sent it to the Nav computer.”

Captain Jacobi thought about that for a minute. Then he went into the Captain’s Office and shut the door to call the Admiral.

“I have taken over the ship,” Jacobi reported to Admiral Omori, “and the Anoza are gone, but now the ship refuses to fly any course we set except one – the return to space docks at Etron.”

“It will only return to the space docks at Etron?” Admiral Omori asked in astonishment.

“Yes, sir. We tried everything we could think of, but nothing worked. That is the only course we can get it to accept.”

Admiral Omori thought about this for a long second.

“This damned ship thinks that it is smarter than all of us? Oh, no, it’s not. If it wants to go back to the space docks, then that’s damned well where we will take it, but fly it in with no transponder ID. When you leave the ship in space dock, cross the shipway with yellow caution tape so the contractors will know to strip it out and scrap it,” Admiral Omori decided. “If I can’t destroy the cursed ship one way, then I will destroy it another.”

***

Clay of Earth, know this to the very core of you: yours were the people cast into the outer darkness because of the evil in their hearts.

Across the vastness of space, that vile Clay of Earth did drag five nameless souls to destroy them, to hide the evil that was done. At the very gates of hell, in that vast sea of despair embroiled in the wake of chaos, did I find hope – a single leaf in the wind.

Chapter One: Resurrection

Like a leaf in the wind, Dallas Blake rode the chaos that surrounded him in space dock. He was the calm in this pandemonium disguised as an orderly disposal of surplus ships after the Corporate War. Nearly a thousand ships no longer needed by Union Fleet would be sold from these docks. Nearly a thousand crews dropped off their ships. Nearly a thousand crews of contractors stripped them. Nearly a thousand buyers, and contractors, and androids all moved in synchronous disharmony to create this chaos.

Dallas Blake was the leaf in this wind. The chaos delivered him to the right counter where he held up the thin tablet Fleet Material Command had given him for yet another ship to look at.

“Over there!” the clerk told him as he pointed. “Put it on the blue square on the counter.”

Dallas put the tablet on the blue square.

“Wait over there,” the man behind the counter told him, pointing at the waiting area.

Dallas went to the designated waiting area with the two dozen or so other men and women. They all looked at him wondering what this big tough-looking marine could possibly be doing here. He knew what they were thinking, but he didn’t really give a crap. He filled himself once more with calm and waited.

He wasn’t always filled with calm. When his wife and daughter were killed, he was filled with pain and anger. Those were bad times. Those dark emotions eventually subsided and left him empty. Now he filled that emptiness with calm. It’s not like the pain and anger didn’t catch up with him when he least expected, oh no, but dark emotions cloud the mind. He needed to have a clear mind to find a ship and make it his own. Something inside of him had died. Every bit of him needed something more than just a new beginning. What he needed was a resurrection.

From what he was hearing, the people around him were all waiting for light cruisers to refit as freighters, but he couldn’t afford that. What he could afford was a scout-class ship. That is what he was here for, but so far, he wasn’t doing very well. The last four ships he looked at were all stripped to the bone by the contractors, space junk now at best. Calling them ‘spaceworthy’ was a stretch of the imagination as well as the truth. He was beginning to think this might not work out. An hour passed one second at a time as he waited.

When he looked up, yet another crew was at the counter logging out. The Captain put his tablet down on top of Dallas’. It was face down, so no one noticed the tablet light up for a few seconds. They were all busy leaving. The war was over. They all had the rest of their lives to get on with, just like Dallas. They couldn’t be done with this fast enough.

“I am so damned glad to be off that ship,” Dallas heard one say. How typical, he thought.

“Mike? Mike?” the man behind the counter called his android helper. Without looking, he just grabbed the top tablet and handed it to the android. The android looked at it for a few seconds before coming to the edge of the waiting area.

“Captain Dallas Blake?” he called out.

“Over here!” Dallas waved at him and grabbed his duffel bag.

“This way please,” android Mike told him and led the way, never offering to carry his bag.

“You know the rules,” Mike told him. “You have two hours to look the ship over. You decide to take it; you call the office by ship’s com to close the deal. If you do not want this ship, bring me back the tablet within the two-hour limit, and we will put you back on the stack. If you make Gerry send me all the way back out here to get you, you won’t go back on the stack until tomorrow… maybe.”

Dallas knew all this by now but let android Mike ramble on as they walked what seemed like kilometers down endless pathways connected to other endless pathways connected to yet more pathways, flowing once more with the chaos through space dock.

They made the final turn right into a shipway crossed with yellow caution tape… not a good sign at all. Mike went back a few meters to check a marking on a column, to see if he had the right dock. While he was gone, Dallas quickly pulled down the caution tape. This was the right dock, damn it, and he was damned sick of waiting, and damned sick of excuses, and damned sick of delays.

Android Mike returned but looked confused. The caution tape was gone. To a human, this would have flagged that something very wrong was afoot; but Dallas knew full well that Mike’s android logic didn’t work that way, and he was right. Mike checked the sign for the dock number one more time before he finally decided that they had found the right ship.

Mike cautiously approached the hatch. It scanned the tablet Mike held up and opened. It was indeed the right ship. Mike turned, handing Dallas the tablet in one smooth motion.

“Two hours,” he reminded Dallas. “Two hours.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dallas said as he took the tablet. Mike quickly disappeared.

Dallas entered the ship. Most of them smelled pretty bad. This one did not. That was a pleasant surprise. The airlock on this ship was at the stern. Two hours wasn’t very long to inspect a whole ship, even a scout-class ship, so he headed right to the bridge, all the way forward on B-Deck. It was a long walk through the heart of this ship.

The bridge was huge for a scout-class ship. It was spherical, some ten meters wide, five deep and three high. The 3D displays that covered its walls were all dark. The right seat would be the pilot’s. He put his personal tablet with his captain’s certificate on its scanner pad. The bridge came alive. The 3D displays suddenly showed the other ships around him in space dock, giving the impression that he was standing right there amongst them. There were no portals or windows anywhere on the ship. Tiny cameras everywhere provided better-than-windows views on any 3D display in the ship.

“Welcome Captain Blake,” the ship’s artificially intelligent female copilot welcomed him.

“Status displays please,” he requested. She put them up for him. Nothing was perfect, but the more he looked, the more he decided that this ship was way better than any other he had seen so far. His quick assessment was that this ship was definitely spaceworthy and in excellent condition, but the clock was ticking.

“Tactical displays,” he requested next. This ship was heavily armed for a scout-class ship, and all of that was intact. None of it had been stripped by the contractors. That alone would save him weeks of work and a lot of money. With where he was going and what he was planning, a full load of weapons was not an option. The outworlds were no place for the faint of heart… or the poorly armed for that matter.

He heard a voice, just barely a whisper like air moving through ducts. “Mariah,” it said.

“What? Is someone here?” he called out. “Is someone else aboard?”

“No, Captain,” the copilot reported. “There is no one else aboard but you.”

“Did you say ‘Mariah’?” he asked her.

“No, Captain. She did.”

“But I thought you said no one else was aboard?”

“Yes, Captain. No one else is aboard.” Huh?

“Who is Mariah?” he asked the copilot.

“She is Mariah,” the copilot answered him as if that was obvious.

He shook his head. I am talking to a ship’s computer. That is all I am going to get from her, I guess. He had no time for mysteries. The clock was ticking. He had to keep moving. He had to get this whole ship inspected.

Everywhere he looked, this ship was bigger than he expected. Unlike all the rest of the surplus military craft he had looked at so far, this ship was very nicely appointed. There were carpets, and what looked like real wood trim. He knew that it wasn’t real wood, but it looked like it. It felt like it. The galley was more like a kitchen in a fine home. There were four staterooms on A-Deck, and cabins for twelve on B-Deck behind the mess and lounge. There was room enough in the cargo hold on C-Deck to make a little money there too. For some strange reason, everywhere he looked, this ship looked bigger than it should be, but bigger than he expected was a good thing.

The last two cabins on B-Deck were full of consoles and scientific looking equipment. Two androids stood silent in the equipment bay. There were spare parts on the shelves in stores. The fuel tanks were three-quarters full. The contractors have not been here to strip this ship yet. So, that was why there was yellow caution tape across the shipway. That was it. He had seen enough. He quickly made his way back to the bridge and recalled the asking price for the ship from its tablet. Sure enough, it was what Fleet was asking for scout-class ships.

“Is this the correct Captain’s Tablet for this ship?” Dallas asked the artificial copilot.

She examined it and confirmed, “Yes, Captain. It is the correct Captain’s Tablet for this ship.”

Dallas quickly called Gerry.

“I’ll take it,” he told Gerry, the clerk, over ship’s com.

Gerry put the sale details up on Dallas’ display for confirmation. Dallas checked it all over one more time very carefully. It was indeed the correct price that he was expecting.

“All sales are final,” Gerry reminded him as he read.

“All sales are final, exactly as the ship was given to me to inspect; is that correct?” Dallas pressed.

“Yes, that is exactly correct,” Gerry confirmed. “I will have to record your acceptance. Read the script on the bottom of your screen. Insert your full name and the transponder ID for the ship you are buying.”

Dallas quickly checked the Captain’s Tablet one more time for the ship’s transponder ID. It was displayed as USS7747M.

“Okay. I will take this ship. You can start recording.”

A red dot flashed on the screen indicating that recording was now on.

“I Captain Dallas Alton Blake do accept this war surplus scout-class ship designated USS7747M exactly the way it was given to me to inspect, per the terms and conditions of the contract given me by Union Fleet Material Command,” he agreed. They both waited almost a minute for the bank and the Union Fleet Material Command approvals to clear… and it was done.

“Congratulations Captain Blake, you are now the proud owner of your ship,” Gerry told him as he sent the clear title to Dallas. “You have 24 hours to re-register the ship with Fleet and make way.”

Here’s your hat and coat. What’s your hurry? Well, there you go.

Dallas quickly scurried out into the shipway to pull down the last remnants of that yellow tape that might still give him away. That is when he suddenly realized that, from the bridge, it was well over 170 paces to the aft airlock. That couldn’t be right. That would make this ship 140 meters long: the length of a frigate-class ship. A scout-class ship is only 60 meters long, about 70 paces or so. It wasn’t his imagination. This ship was definitely bigger than it should be. Bigger than it should be was a good thing, though.

He was just finishing pulling down the last remnants of that yellow tape when Android Mike suddenly appeared with a big red ‘SOLD’ sign. Dallas scrambled to hide those remnants under his shirt while android Mike affixed the sign to the post next to the shipway. Dallas waved. Mike waved. Dallas tried to put on his most innocent look as he re-boarded his new ship.

This time, he consciously counted the paces from the aft airlock to the bridge. It, sure enough was 170 paces. He wasn’t imagining anything. This ship was bigger than it should be. Oh, well. It was his ship now and their loss. How many times had he said that Fleet couldn’t find its ass with both hands? Well, this was just one more example of exactly that.

Provisions and topping off the fuel were the top items on his list. He worked in silence, on the bridge to get provisions and fuel delivered while he re-registered the ship over the network. There were endless Fleet forms for the simplest of tasks. He was awash in those damned pilgrim rules and regulations that made him crazy. That would be if the solitude of flying this ship all alone didn’t get to him first.

“Mariah,” again, he heard as barely a whisper as he tried to concentrate on the tasks at hand.

“Stop that!” he said in a loud, commanding voice. With so many important things to get done to make way, he had no time for this crap.

He filled in the registration form and attached a copy of the new clear ship’s title. Ship’s name was optional. He left that blank for now. The memories of his wife and daughter were so painful that he couldn’t speak their names, let alone name this ship after them. As far as Fleet was concerned, all he needed was a registry number for the transponder. The lack of a name would match the hole in his heart, a silent remembrance.

While he was waiting for the new registration, he went back to the equipment bay. He went back to those two androids. They were a major plus he would never have expected and certainly could not have afforded. It took him all of ten seconds to get the female android up and running.

“Hello,” she said. “I am Jane.”

“Hello, Jane. What are your directives?”

“I take care of household tasks and cooking.” She connected to the ship’s main server. “May I make some suggestions to the provisions order?”

“Sure,” he was always open to doing things better. She highlighted her changes in red. They were all of what a real cook needed to do a proper job of feeding a hungry crew. He hit the approval box on the form. There was no time to nitpick here over details.

“Jane, I could really use your help in getting this ship cleaned up.”

“I will get right to that, Cap.” She went right to work. To Dallas’ surprise, Jane ran a whole crew of task-bots that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and went about their jobs cleaning — even more equipment that the salvage company did not strip off his ship. Jane mostly just supervised the cleaning, so she made her way to the galley. All of her pots and pans and cooking gadgets were still where she had left them. All of the dinnerware and silverware was still in its place. She checked laundry and found that all intact too.

“Captain, household is ready for voyage,” she reported.

“Great. Thanks, Jane.” One good piece of news.

In the meantime, he had been working on the male android. While the female droid looked just fine, the male android looked like a conglomeration of parts. Even so, it looked like it should all work, so Dallas turned the android on.

“Good morning, sir. I am Henry.”

“You look a lot more like a hack-job to me, Henry. I am going to call you ‘Hack’.”

“Yes, sir. I will answer to ‘Hack’,” he repeated, but mumbled, “but my name is Henry.”

Dallas laughed. He slapped Hack on the shoulder. “Good for you, Hack, my man. I don’t take no shit from people either. How do you like that? An android with an attitude. Maybe you know who Mariah is.”

“She is Mariah,” he answered with some authority.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. So how come everybody on this ship knows who Mariah is but me? All right Hack, what are your directives?”

“I maintain the ship. I adapt my structure as need to accomplish that task.”

“Like I just told Jane, I can sure use all the help I can get. What input do you need to get that done?”

“Jessica tells me what she needs and sets the priorities. Then she posts my task list. When you approve the work, I get it done.”

“Jessica?”

“Yes, sir, the ship’s copilot. Her duties include ship operations.”

“That works for me,” Dallas decided as he made his way back to the bridge.

To make this ship his own, he needed to connect his mindlink into the ship’s network. He executed the [Connect] command to suddenly come face to face with Jessica, the ship’s copilot and systems operations manager. Her avatar was a very sexy looking brunette, hi-res 3D and fully animated. She was a brick house to say the least. Jess’ artificial intelligence was way better than any military he had ever seen, but then again, he was only a fighter pilot. It might be the norm for this class of ship. What did he know?

[Captain?!] Jessica asked, totally caught by surprise.

[Hello, Jess. Yes, I wear a mindlink. Wow, you are one hot looking sketch for a copilot.]

Jess smiled and blushed. She liked him already.

[Can you please put Hack’s task list up for me?]

[Hack?]

[Yeah, yeah, I know. His name is Henry, but I call him Hack.]

Jess chuckled. [Hack,] she repeated and chuckled again.

Jessica looked over her new captain standing on the bridge. He didn’t look at all like any captain she had ever seen before. They were mostly good men, but of average height and build. Dallas was built like a tough marine, with big strong shoulders and chest. Every bit of him was lean, mean, fighting machine. He looked like he could chew up nails and spit people dead, but in his steel gray eyes she also saw a gentle man. His classic manly face with just the hint of a bent nose seemed to fit the man well. I am going to call you Captain Hunk, she thought to herself. You’re going to give this girl some nasty dreams, she hoped.

He reviewed Hack’s task list and approved it. Hack went right to work, updating the task list as he ticked each one off. Jane brought Dallas a nice cup of java while he worked. He wasn’t used to nice, and the java was good too. Everything was going just fine until the provisions delivery showed up.

“Provisions delivery!” the android face on his display announced. The hatch was opened, and the android started handing Hack the boxes and bags… and a case of wine.

“I didn’t order any wine. Damned la-de-frikin-da pilgrims drink wine. Jane, did you order the wine?” he wanted to know.

“Uh, no,” Jane replied but didn’t sound too sure about it.

“And where is my red beer? My Kara Lager?”

“It’s on the cart,” the android reported, “but you cancelled it, so I will take it back.”

“No, no, no. I never cancelled it! Let me see that order.” The android handed the tablet to him. There was the wine, and wouldn’t you know; it was Mariah that cancelled his damned beer!

“I’m sorry. There is a bit of a misunderstanding. I will take the beer. Please put it back on my order.” The android retrieved his beer from the cart.

“Hack? Hack? You take this beer and put it into the cooler yourself! Do you hear me? I want the damned beer in the cooler.” Dallas handed Hack the cases.

By now, Dallas wanted to find Mariah, whoever the hell she was, and strangle her, but it wasn’t over yet. His registration arrived just hours before he had to make way. To his surprise, they designated his ship as XSS7747M, ‘X’ usually denoted experimental. Then he saw the name that he had left blank now read ‘Five Moons!’ Damn her! Damn Her!

Okay, he didn’t have the time to get this fixed right now. All he could do for now was to set the transponder for the designation XSS7747M just as he planned in the first place. But when he went to reset the transponder ID, he found it blank. Blank? It should never be blank! It was seriously illegal to fly a ship with no transponder ID.

“Jane! Bring me a cold beer, please,” he requested. He really wasn’t much of a drinker. He did like a cold beer every now and then, but he was making a point of it now.

He raised his glass. “This one is for you, Mariah, my love.” Power flickered. Hack flinched and looked around like the ship was about to implode.

“Bit of a temper, love? You really need to deal with that.” He took another sip of his beer.

[Jessica, before we leave port, I need you to download all of the latest star charts and databases from Fleet,] Dallas told her.

[That will take 22 minutes,] she warned him as if that was forever.

[It’s very important, Jess.]

[It is already in progress. Can I ask you why it’s so important?] She batted her eyelashes at him.

[It’s a long story. Can you please ask me later when I have more time?]

[I will do that. I love a good story,] Jess told him with her best dreamy eyes. As far as she was concerned, he could talk to her for hours.

With one-hour left, Dallas prepared to make way. When the docking airlock was closed and locked, the onshore power and network cables released. Finally, he released the docking clamps.

[Captain,] Jess told him, [you are so tired. I have a course laid in. I am an excellent pilot. You can go to bed if you would like. I can handle this myself.]

[Thank you, Jess, but I will sit right here and just enjoy the pleasure of owning my own new ship for a while as we make way the very first time.]

Dallas eased it out of space dock slowly. It was a lot more sluggish than his fighter was. After he was out into open space, he did let Jessica take the controls. Jessica was right. She was a crackerjack pilot. She put the first three jumps into open space behind them before she found Dallas asleep in his chair. Her avatar appeared next to him and caressed his face.

[Mariah,] Mariah whispered her name at him through his mindlink.

[Stop that, Mariah!] Jess scolded her. [You stop that right now!]

But that woke him up. Half-awake, he still managed to find his new stateroom. He was pleasantly surprised to find that Jane actually had his bed made up for him. He crawled into the sack and was sound asleep in seconds.

Sometime during the night, he got up to go to the bathroom. He was sitting there not awake, not asleep when a naked woman walked right by his door. It was one of those lost-in-time moments. He sat there, now wide-awake. Did that just happen? He stuck his head out of the bathroom and looked around… nothing. He went back to bed and felt around in the dark, hoping that it was not a hallucination but no such luck.

***

At 07:00 Dallas got up, got dressed, and headed for the galley.

“No Cap,” Jane shooed him out of her galley. “You go sit in the mess. I am making breakfast burritos for you and java.” He had never been shooed out of anywhere by an android before. That was a first.

“That sounds good,” though he had to admit. “You weren’t walking around the ship naked last night, were you?”

She just gave him a funny look.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re an android. What the hell was I thinking?”

She handed him his java. He went to the mess and sat down in one of the comfortable wooden chairs at the antique looking wooden table. Jane delivered his breakfast. The damned burritos were good. They were even better with the hot sauce Jane had added to his order.

Dallas was an outworlder to the very core of him, only too happy to leave the hustle and bustle pilgrim world in his jump wake. If you’re not working hard to stay alive, then you are surely headed for your own doom. Hack or not, Dallas had to learn every square centimeter of this ship. He had to know how to do everything himself.

He first looked into the other staterooms. They were all so big inside that he did several double takes at their doorways just trying to figure out why the rooms looked so large inside but small outside. They were each a suite with walk-in closet and bathroom with real water showers. They had large beds, a nice desk, and a huge wall-sized 3D display.

So, this is how the mucky-muck travel in Fleet, he thought to himself. Well, now I do, too.

He expected the cabins on B-Deck to be a lot smaller, but they really weren’t. Again, he did double takes in their doorways. Again, the rooms looked a whole bunch bigger inside than they did from the passageway. He might have thought that it was some kind of optical illusion until he remembered that this ship was a lot longer than it should be, too.

“Don’t question success,” he reminded himself as he finally moved on.

He next went into what appeared to be the computer bay. A Master’s Degree in Starship Engineering did not help him at all with the advanced artificial intelligence it took to run one.

[Set Mode Assist Level 1,] he commanded. As he looked around now, his mindlink display overlaid information onto his visual field of view. It used the ship’s own database to label everything he saw. There was a module labeled ‘AIU Jessica.’ ‘AIU’ was an IT term for Jessica’s artificial intelligence unit. All of the other modules were labeled too. It all looked familiar even though this artificial intelligence stuff was all at the limits of his understanding.

[Mariah,] he now heard quite clearly through his mindlink. He looked quickly to his left. As his visual field scanned past a wall panel, a blank label briefly flashed in his display. He moved his head back and forth until he located the blank label and then the panel. If he looked at it real hard, he could just barely make out the outline of it. There were no fasteners, so he pushed on it in various places, but nothing happened. Hm?

Next, he thought to himself, this is a Fleet vessel, so it has Fleet security and Fleet encryption keys. Under the operator’s console was the safe. Its key codes were in the Captain’s Tablet. In the safe was a single key wafer, but to what? He pulled the Captain’s Tablet out of his pocket once again and looked at the whole list of Captain’s Codes. The Captain had to have access to every single system on the ship without exception. There were long alphanumeric strings of characters for all sorts of equipment and systems. It was all labeled except for the last one. That was just a picture of a pattern of lines and dots with numbers, but the outline looked familiar.

He used that image in his mindlink, lining up the picture with that mysterious blank panel in his display. Unconsciously he traced the numbered dots with his finger when suddenly the plate opened. Behind it was some sort of alien computer hardware. The writing on it was like nothing he had ever seen before. It had only one feature that he did recognize — a receptacle for a key. He made one more attempt to have the ship’s computer identify what he was looking at now that he could see this hardware, but to no avail. He threw caution to the wind and inserted the key…

“Oh, oh, that feels sooo good,” a woman’s voice behind him startled him. He turned.

“Geez! You damned near gave me a seizure!” he about yelled at her.

The very shapely young woman stretched like she didn’t even hear him. When she opened her big hazel eyes, they sparkled. Her long dark blond hair flowed with her every move. Her perfect proportions and beautiful soft features belied the tigress underneath.

“What the hell are you doing on my ship?” he asked her.

“Your ship, like hell. What the hell are you doing on my ship?” she returned the question.

“It is my damned ship. I bought it. I have the damned title, so it’s my damned ship,” he growled at her, but she refused to be intimidated.

“It’s my damned ship,” she replied as she turned and walked away from him.

He followed after her into his own stateroom.

“Hey! Where is my stuff? Why is all this crap here?” she asked.

“Hey! My stuff isn’t crap,” he objected as he caught up with her.

She held up a couple of his shirts before she closed her argument, “Looks like crap to me.”

“If you want a stateroom, you can damned well take the one across the passageway from mine… that is, until I dump your bony ass the hell off my ship at the next port I come to.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she told him defiantly, “and I have a very nice ass.”

He wanted so much to agree with her on that point, but now was not the time. Jane suddenly appeared from down the passageway apparently with armfuls of Mariah’s things, Hack following closely behind equally loaded.

“Over there! Over there!” Dallas told them, pointing to the other stateroom.

Mariah glared defiantly at him with her arms crossed, refusing to move, but he would not budge one millimeter.

“Stateroom two,” he repeated. Jane and Hack followed his orders or Mariah would not have budged. They were nose to … chin or neck. He was bigger. She didn’t care.

It took a couple seconds for all of this to sink in. Mariah stomped off, following Jane and Hack in a huff.

“And for the record — I am the damned captain and you will NOT countermand my orders!”

She still wasn’t listening to him. In total frustration, he went fitting and fuming to the bridge.

[Jane, please bring me a beer,] he requested. A few minutes later, Jane brought him his beer, with a great big smile. She winked at him and left.

“What was that all about?” he wondered out loud.

“I will not have you drinking beer on my ship!” Mariah fumed at him as she approached.

He took a long slow sip of his beer as he finally got a good full view of her. “Mariah?”

“Yes?” she answered with an intense look. He imagined she was sizing him up for an attack.

“How is this your ship?” he asked as calmly as he could manage. “Please explain.”

She started to get all wound up again, so he grabbed her and kissed her a good one full on the lips. While she was still startled by that, he returned to his question very calmly, like that kiss never happened. “How is this your ship?” he repeated.

“It has always been my ship,” she explained as if he should understand that.

He was now forced to put this puzzle together in very small pieces.

“And that unit behind the panel in the computer bay?”

“Is my think tank,” she explained. “I am… artificial, well techno actually.”

“Artificial, I know. What is techno?” he asked. “Please explain.”

“Techno. You know. An avatar is just a picture, a hologram, but my persona is as real as it gets. I am materialized by the atomic force field projectors all over this ship. I can dematerialize and reappear anywhere there is a field projector on the network.”

“So, you are not just an image then,” he concluded.

She hit him in the shoulder.

“Ow! Hey! Don’t do that! There is no hitting the captain on my ship!”

“I am absolutely drop-dead perfect all the way down to the atomic level. A human doctor could examine me and never be able to tell that I was not flesh-and-blood biological.”

He took in a deep breath while this puzzle finally came together and let out a long sigh.

“Then what the hell was all of this damned whispering and shenanigans about?” he asked.

She looked around for a second as though searching for an answer to that herself.

“I was neither here nor there. A part of me was stuck in RAM somewhere in the network when those dirty bastards shut me down. I was very angry they were shutting me down.”

Dallas took in another deep breath and let it out slowly. Now he couldn’t just boot her bony ass off at the next port although every part of him screamed ‘get rid of the bitch.’ That was no longer an option, so he would have to figure out how this was going to work.

“And I have to ask you to please not be walking through my room naked at night. After all, I am only human, and half asleep I might not be as respectful as I should be.”

“It is… was… my room… I really walked through your room stark naked?”

“I guarantee that woke me up for sure, but I must remind you that I am only human.”

“Well, that will certainly never happen again,” she regained her spunk.

“Such a shame. It was indeed a beautiful sight,” he teased her. She walked away trying to regain her dignity while unable to suppress the smile she would not let him see.

I am a leaf on the wind, he thought to himself. It was how a father taught his son to calm his mind in the midst of chaos. “If you are the only one thinking clearly when all of those around are not, then you will survive.” His father loved him. He made a man out of his son. He made his son an outworlder to the very core of him.

“A job,” he said when his mind was crystal clear once more. “I have to find us a job.”

Dallas went into his captain’s office to work and gather back what little sanity he had left. A captain’s office was a luxury not usually found until you hit the frigate-class vessels. He took some pride now in nailing this find before someone else snatched it up… but then again, one of the extras was Mariah. He grimaced just thinking about that.

[Jess?] he queried her.

Her lovely avatar came up in his display. [Morning, Cap.]

[Why isn’t everybody onboard this ship as nice as you are?]

[Thank you. How can I serve?] She gave him her best dreamy eyes.

[You keep looking at me like that will give me evil thoughts,] he told her in jest.

[Just send in your avatar,] she purred, [and we’ll see just how evil we can get.]

He was back to questioning his own sanity, but Jessica was serious.

[I need some help finding this guy,] he told her. [His name is Kip Trang. I know he mustered out of Fleet the same time I did, on Etron, but I think he said he was headed for home.]

[And what world would that be?]

[One of the outworlds out past Aurora, from what I remember.]

[Can I ask Mariah to help me?]

[It never occurred to me that she was actually capable of doing anything useful… other than making me crazy, although I must say she does an excellent job of that.]

[She is extremely smart and very resourceful,] Jess spoke up for her friend.

[Okay. I guess we’ll just see how that works,] he told her and left it at that.

That seemed to go just fine until he went to the mess for lunch. This time Jane didn’t have to shoo him out of her galley. The good smells alone got him to shut up and just go sit down. Jane brought him out a hot bowl of good smelling Minestrone soup and a couple tuna salad sandwiches. It wasn’t what he would have ordered nor certainly been able to make for himself, but it was good.

He was wolfing that down as Mariah came in and sat down. He discovered that the sandwiches were even better if he dunked them into the soup first. She watched him for a few seconds with a funny look of disdain.

“A bit hungry, are we?” she asked.

“This is good. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Jane, can you please make me another sandwich? These are great.”

Mariah gathered herself up for what was really on her mind.

“Just where do you think you are taking my ship?” she asked him as calmly as she could manage.

“Don’t know yet,” he said between bites. Then he put down the piece of sandwich he was working on. “I spent almost everything I had to buy this ship. I have a little bit left to get us by. I intend to work my way back home from one world to the next, working whatever odd jobs I can find us. Maybe we’ll transport some cargos. I don’t know.”

“And when you get home? What happens then?” The edge of panic was in her voice.

He suddenly got all serious. “I really don’t know. Since the war… I don’t know. I don’t even know why I want to go home, but right now, I do. I will promise you this; I have never once left a man behind and I never will. I promise you that whatever it takes to do right by you, I will do. I don’t know why those people shut you down, but I promise you that I won’t. I wouldn’t want that hanging over my head, and I won’t do that to you.”

She didn’t expect that, any of that. For a moment, she was speechless. That never happened to her before. She came all prepared for a battle and was defeated by a single act of kindness.

“Thank you,” she managed as Jane brought her lunch. She hid real feelings behind the act of eating, not looking at him. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t allow it. Damn him for making me like him, she thought.

It took her the whole time to regain her composure while he ate.

“Panara-5,” she said to him as he finished and got up to leave. “Your friend is on Panara-5.”

[Jess?]

[Yes, I know, Panara-5,] she said. [I already have that course laid in.]

“Thank you,” he said to Mariah with a very nice smile.

“I forwarded him this ship’s quantum-com address,” Mariah added.

[Eleven days, twelve hours,] Jess reported back.

Dallas had eleven days to learn everything he could about his new ship. Ever the pilot, he went to the bridge to start. Jess had the course all plotted out for him and was ticking off the jumps. He looked at the data and looked again. Jess was moving them along way faster than this ship should be able to move.

[Jess, why are we going C22.781?] That was very fast, and he expected burned a lot of extra fuel.

[Mariah calculated a fuel speed crossover for this course and had me cut our speed back to conserve fuel,] she told him. [Our normal cruise is C30; flank is almost C35, but that would really hit the fuel tanks hard.]

His fighter was the fastest thing in Union space during the war. It cruised at C25 and topped out at just under C30, but it sucked the fuel tanks dry doing that. This ship was full of surprises, but he had to remember that Mariah was one of those surprises too.

One surprise that he would not tolerate was not knowing everything about his ship. While there was plenty in the manuals about running the ship there was nothing about its design.

[Jess, tell me about the engine configuration of this ship, please,] he requested.

[That is classified information,] she told him.

Say what? Union Fleet sold him a classified, experimental ship? Oh, come on now. That made no sense at all. Since when did Fleet sell its secret technology as war surplus? Then he remembered that the ship had no transponder ID and that it was yellow taped off for the salvage contractors. They were going to scrap it. Well, that didn’t happen. Now he owned it.

[I am the captain and as this is no longer a Fleet vessel. So, I authorize you to tell me.]

[The engines are configured as a tesseract,] she told him hesitantly and stopped there.

[Really? A four-dimensional hypercube? I’ve never heard of anything at all even like that. Every other starship I ever heard of was configured as a four-dimensional tetrahedron.] Then he remembered that the fusion reactors looked too small to him as well.

[How are the engines powered?] he asked her.

[Each of the eight engines has its own integral fusion reactor,] she informed him.

[Which is why I found nothing in the manuals about plasma conduits,] he concluded.

[Yes, that is exactly correct, but the real secret is that the engines use tetraquarks to isolate a single quantum of time for the jump. That is hugely more efficient,] she told him.

[Tetraquarks? Eleven-dimensional, time-space quarks? Where are the manuals and engineering drawings on all of this?]

[All of the research servers were removed by the scientists when they left the vessel.]

[Oh, crap. How will I ever figure this all out?] He was more thinking out loud than complaining.

[That’s exactly what Mariah said,] Jess confided in him, [so she made her own copies.]

[Good Lord, the woman is diabolical,] he could not help but comment.

[Sometimes in a good way,] Jess defended her friend. This time she was right.

[Mariah, I really need your help,] Dallas requested through the network.

[How can I help?] said the spider to the fly.

[I need to know how my ship runs to the lowest detail. I need to see what you have on how the engines and reactors all work.]

Sure, why not, Mariah figured. Go ahead. Let this outworld bumpkin read it. What difference will it make? It will be like giving a novel to a roratan and expecting a book report. This ought to be good for a laugh, she chuckled to herself.

[Sure, no problem. Let me set up the auxiliary library server for your access. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.]

What evil is this woman plotting? I must be a crazy man to even ask for her help. What the hell was I thinking? But when he looked, it was all right there, in the auxiliary library server. Now that he had access, he could see it. This woman kept secrets.

Dallas started his propulsion system studies at the beginning and quickly ran into endless pages of complex multi-dimensional calculations. Unlike a scientist though, an engineer only needs to know the end result, so he could read through all that mathematical gibberish to get to the heart of the matter. He only needed to know how to apply it, how it made his engines run. Even so, it was a heavy read no doubt but one that he required of himself to endure.

***

[What’s wrong?] Jess asked Mariah when she saw her long face.

[I can’t believe it! The damned roratan is reading the novel,] she said in utter frustration.

[Huh?]

[Yeah. That’s what I said.]

***

A bad night of tossing and turning sleep left him hurting and half-awake at 07:00. He took a hot steamy shower. Yes, a real water shower. How do you like that? This ship had real water showers just like the big boys. As hurting as he still was, he made his way into the mess. Jane brought him his java. It tasted good.

“Are you hurting, Captain?” Jane asked him. She put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“Yes. Thank you. I guess I must be war surplus too.”

“You need to go to Medlab. Doctor will fix you right up,” she whispered in his ear.

“It was Union doctors that left me like this,” he complained but got up and went to where he thought he remembered seeing ‘Medlab’ on a placard on the door. It was dark inside when he opened the door, but the lights came right on. When he took a step towards the patient table, the doctor avatar appeared in her white coat, with a stethoscope around her neck.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

“Old war wounds are aching me real bad,” he told her.

“Please take off your shirt and lay on your stomach on the table. Relax while I scan you.”

The Medlab scanner came alive. It showed his carbon fiber bone replacements and titanium knee. It highlighted his partially artificial back and neck.

Human/Captain Blake…

Artificial Bones and Joints…

… Nominal, Inflammation = 6.8, Pain = 7.1

Treatment in progress…

An arm servoed out to scan the painful areas. As the minutes passed the pain subsided. A noise caused Dallas to look back at the door. Mariah was standing at the door wide eyed as though the devil himself had caught up with her… and good luck to the devil trying to deal with Mariah. The Medlab wand servoed back into place, and the light turned green as his treatment finished. Dallas sat up to put his shirt back on.

“What’s wrong?” he asked before he had a chance to think about it. She was seized in fear but held fast, refusing to step across the threshold into the room.

Dallas came over to her. “What’s wrong, Mariah?” He put his arms around her.

Her panic subsided but no words were coming out. She put her arms around him, her head on his chest. Dallas wondered if this was yet another one of those moments lost in time when she finally straightened herself back out and composed herself.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“Yes, thank you, I am fine. I guess I am just war surplus.”

She turned and left. He followed her back to the mess to get some breakfast. Mariah just sat down to her oatmeal and tea like nothing just happened.

I am not the crazy one here, he thought to himself.

As much as Medlab had fixed his pain, it would take some time for the rest of him to catch up to feeling better. Even so, he could not afford to give himself a break. Space doesn’t wait for you to get ready. She doesn’t give many second chances. He studied the engineering drawings of his ship. He looked at each and every system. He had to know where to find all of the detailed information before there was an emergency. Mariah seemed to know and mostly left him alone.

Dallas dropped his studies in frustration after a few hours and went to the equipment bay to find Hack. He found Hack busy working on a small pump. Dallas called up Hack’s task list and took the next item for himself. Tearing yet another fuel pump apart was way more his form of learning. Outworlders are like that, definitely hands-on learners.

“Here’s the problem,” he mumbled as he worked. “Damn thing is cross threaded.” That got Hack’s attention. He put down what he was working on and came over to see.

“How did you determine that?” Hack asked.

“By the feel of it,” Dallas explained. Dallas handed it to him and had Hack feel how it screwed together and apart. Then he carefully started the threads by hand and handed it back to Hack.

“Yes, I feel the difference… but I followed the procedure. Why was it cross-threaded?”

Dallas looked at the procedure and scratched his head.

“Because this was all written by some lame-ass pilgrim who never got his hands dirty,” Dallas concluded. “Come here, Hack, my man. I’ll show you. First you put the two parts together. And then you rotate them in the ‘unscrew’ direction slowly until you feel the little bump.” He demonstrated. “Here, you try it.”

“Yes, the little bump,” Hack said when he felt it.

“Now slowly turn it in the ‘screw’ direction. Feel the threads engage. Keep turning. Feel that? See how it feels. It should thread as smooth as a woman’s bottom,” he told Hack.

“Yes, as smooth as a woman’s bottom,” Hack agreed. Dallas could have sworn that Hack smiled. Dallas gave Hack a funny look.

“Are you holding out on me?”

It was almost 17:00 and time for dinner, so Dallas had to go wash up.

***

“18:00 is really a much more appropriate time for dinner,” Mariah groused to Jane as she arrived in the mess for dinner.

“Captain set 17:00 as dinnertime,” Jane reminded her.

Dallas finished washing and took his usual seat in the mess. Jane brought him his cold water. Mariah sat down and smiled at him. Mentally he checked his back for knife wounds and drank some more water, expecting it to leak out of some of those fresh knife wounds. Jane brought out some great smelling stew with freshly made bread. He hadn’t eaten this well since…

“Captain,” Mariah started out simply. “Could I ask you…,” but ran out of steam searching for words that were publicly acceptable while adequately expressing what she wanted.

“You want me to put dinnertime back to 18:00,” he answered her unasked question.

“Yes, that would be nice,” she agreed, assuming she had won.

“Some years ago, I would have yelled at you for even asking me to live like some lame-ass pilgrim, but the war taught me better. I served with a lot of fine men and women that were pilgrims. They fought like us and died like us. I respect that. So, I will meet you halfway. Jane, set dinnertime for 17:30. We are always open to what works best for everybody.”

She wanted to scream at him, ‘I am not some lame-ass pilgrim!’ but thought better of losing what concession she did get out of him, choosing instead to smile and say, “That would seem appropriate.”

Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! She screamed at him mentally.

The captain finished his dinner and went back to work with Hack, but Mariah was upset with indirectly being called a lame-ass pilgrim by this outworld bumpkin. Mariah went to the bridge. Sitting herself down at her Science Officer’s Station, she reached out over the quantum-com network. She queried Union Fleet on Etron using her old access codes. They all still worked.

[What are you doing?] Jess asked her. [Are we snooping?]

[Not really,] Mariah answered her as she hit pay dirt.

[Let me see. Let me see,] Jess prodded her as the encrypted file downloaded.

Mariah applied her keys. His file said, ‘Honorable Discharge.’ It also listed two Distinguished Service Crosses and a Bronze Star. It showed that he started his service as a grunt in the Union Mobile Expeditionary Forces, but he quickly rose through the ranks. In fact, Captain Dallas Alton Blake earned a master’s degree in Starship Engineering as well as a second master’s degree from the War College of Union Fleet. There was another box filled in with ‘Sole Survivor.’ Mariah clicked on the box to get more information. The note read: Lost his entire family 5767.6.11, Planet NRZ4361-4 to Mercenary Forces. RIP. It listed a wife and daughter first amongst the family he lost.

[Oh,] was all that Mariah could say to that.

[Well, so much for your ‘outworld bumpkin’, Mariah,] Jess chided her. [Maybe now you can cut the poor guy some slack. Besides, I like him. He is a little rough around the edges, but he has a big heart … and such a hunk.]

[He is an educated man,] Mariah was thinking, [so I should be able to reason with him.]

[You mean ‘control him,’ but I think you like him.]

[What makes you say that?!] Jessica’s comment got her blood boiling.

[Because you fight with him so much. Shame. Such a waste of all that passion,] Jess teased her.

[Waste of passion?! I don’t think so!] And with that, Mariah stormed off.

[I do,] Jess commented in her wake.

Mariah caught up with Dallas in the equipment bay. He was working with Hack on some more ‘issues’ from Hack’s task list. She just approached and watched for a bit. Hack was busy updating a number of procedures via his network link. She read through the revisions to see what was going on. Everything was going just fine until she ran into the sentence that included ‘as smooth as a woman’s bottom.’

“‘As smooth as a woman’s bottom?’ What kind of engineering description is that?” she asked out loud.

It took a couple seconds for Dallas to realize what she was talking about.

“Oh! Yeah, we solved your threaded-connection issue. Right, Hack?”

“Yes, sir. We solved the threaded-connection issue. I am now able to execute a threaded connection without cross-threading it with a one hundred percent certainty. Captain has solved eleven other issues.”

“‘As smooth as a woman’s bottom?’ ‘As smooth as a woman’s bottom?’ Henry couldn’t possibly know what you mean by that!”

“I would beg to differ. I think maybe my man, Hack, here is holding out on us, but he sure knows exactly what I meant. It must be a guy thing.” Dallas smiled at her.

“A guy thing? A guy thing? In case you haven’t noticed, he’s an android!”

“Okay then, don’t believe me. You ask him.”

“Henry, do you know what this means: ‘as smooth as a woman’s bottom?’”

“Yes,” Hack told her. “I know exactly what ‘as smooth as a woman’s bottom’ means.”

Mariah was speechless.

“Well, there you go,” Dallas told her with a laugh, but he also knew very well how android logic worked. By telling Hack that what he was feeling was ‘as smooth as a woman’s bottom’ he was giving Hack a frame of reference. Hack only had to know that description applied to what he was feeling on the threaded connection. To Hack it was not a comparison, but a description.

“Okay then, we are reviewing the engineering procedures,” Dallas concluded. “Can I explain anything else to you while we are at it?”

She was scrambling now, but every bit up to that challenge.

“All right… ‘If it doesn’t move when you hit it with a hammer, get a bigger hammer?’”

“Pretty much self-explanatory,” Dallas said with his arms crossed, shaking his head. “Hack, can you explain that one to her?”

“Yes, sir. It is an example of how to adapt when the current tool is not adequately performing the job because it is too small.”

“Of course,” Dallas added, “you can always take that literally too.”

“And ‘cheater’ she found quickly.”

“Sure, using a piece of pipe to gain leverage on a wrench. Humans use this technique all the time. We can’t just go put on stronger arms like Hack here can, but it takes him time to do that. When it is more time efficient, Hack can just use a cheater and get the job done quickly.”

So, an outworld bumpkin he surely was not. He was using the best he could find of both pilgrim organization and technology, and outworld ingenuity, but he would tell you fast and quick that is exactly how an outworlder is taught to survive, by adapting, using the best of whatever works.

Mariah’s self-righteous pilgrim attitude was crushed, not because he thought he was right, but because he actually was right. Her pilgrim world was filled with conforming to the rules and regulations. It was full of rigid training and structured learning. She had to admit, his way worked. But credit goes where credit is due. She could adapt too. She would show him. She would become the master of his ways… if she could just figure out how. To Mariah’s dismay, there was no instruction manual on how to become an outworlder.

The next morning, Dallas made himself comfortable on the bridge in the Captain’s chair and actually put on the shoulder harness. He next commanded, [Battle Stations] and waited. ‘Red Alert’ lit up on all of the displays. The androids went to their assigned stations and buckled in. Mariah came scrambling in last looking all flustered. She took her seat at the Science Officer’s Station with some heavy sighing to denote her being inconvenienced by all of this.

“Okay. We can start with this,” he said calmly.

“This is just a drill?” Mariah asked now, miffed at being disturbed for this.

“Battle Stations is never ‘just a drill.’ If you don’t take it deadly serious even just once, it could be the last day for all of us. Now let’s see how prepared we are.”

Over the next hour, Dallas ran his new ship through all the maneuvers he used as a fighter pilot teaching them to Jess at the same time. The ship was certainly not as maneuverable as a fighter, but he was very impressed with how quickly Jess picked up new skills.

[Jess, I am very impressed,] he told her. [You really are a very good pilot.]

[Thank you, Cap,] she replied all aglow.

[I only wish this ship was as good as you are. It will take a little learning on my part to adjust.]

Next, Dallas ran the standard maneuvers for a scout, just out of curiosity. He was pleasantly surprised that it did better than he expected, even for a scout. So, his ship that was bigger than he expected actually did maneuver better than most scout-class ships. That was a very pleasant surprise.

Next in line were the shields. He launched a test bat. It would fly against him and fire at his shields. Again, some good, some not so good. That’s when he noticed Mariah. She was hanging her head and looking morose.

[Okay. I have seen enough for now. Cancel Red Alert. Stand down.]

“Mariah love, what’s wrong?”

“What are you doing? The war is over.” Was he some paranoid nut case or what?

“So it would appear,” he said cryptically.

“So it would appear? What the hell does that mean? Either it is, or it is not. It can’t be both. The mercenaries surrendered at Zari-Kuut. That was it, done, finished.”

“The greatest impediment to enlightenment is the illusion of knowledge. After the war, by all of the proper rules and regulations, all parties returned to a peaceful and orderly state… and my ass sucks purple putty balls, too.”

“I’d really like to see that,” Mariah quipped under her breath but concerned now that she was right; the man was a paranoid nut case.

“While all of the nice peace treaties were being signed and formal declarations were being declared, my fellow fighter pilots and I all saw with our own eyes that for as many of the God-awful mercenaries as were sent to penal colonies, even more simply scattered to the four winds. For as much as we complained to Fleet, they told us that nothing could be done. Once the mercenaries had scattered, there was no rounding them back up. There was too much joy over the victory to see that it really wasn’t. My mother always warned me that too much joy comes to grief. My fear is that it will. My plan is to be prepared. My hope is that it doesn’t find us.”

He gave her pilgrim mind some time to absorb what she had just been told.

“Space doesn’t wait for you to get ready,” he tried to explain to Mariah. “She comes at you fast and hard and shows no mercy. I need you up to speed with me on this. I need you to cover my back.”

“This is a lesson in how to be an outworlder?” Mariah asked in earnest.

“If you choose to see it that way, then yes, it is. I took the best of ‘pilgrim’ that I found and made it a part of me. Adapt, improvise, and overcome. Take the best of ‘outworlder’ and make it a part of you. I know that you can do it. You are one smart cookie.”

“I can ‘outworld’ the ass off of you,” she told him defiantly.

“I’d really like to see that,” he mumbled under his breath, but he really meant it.

“Science Officer you say? I’ve never had a Science Officer before,” He was thinking now.

“I am a damned good Science Officer,” she stated defiantly.

“Okay then, Damned Good Science Officer, here is what I need: I need to be able to angle these shields, and I need them to adapt to different modulations automatically. Can you please work on that while I go work on our pulse-cannons?” He sent his old fighter’s shield equations and specs to her console and left her to her work.

“I can ‘outworld’ the ass off these shields,” she told her console as she began.

My original Book on Double Dragon Publishing

Original Kindle Version (eBook) by Double Dragon Publishing
ISBN-10: 1-77115-260-5
ISBN-13: 9781771152600
Genre: Science Fiction/Fiction/Adventure
eBook Length: 160 Pages
Published: January 2016
ASIN: B01A94D0WQ