Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

Brook blinked. “Meltia. What is it with Meltia and doing things in person?”

JP began, “Meltian political culture‌—‌”

“Never mind!” Brook held up a hand. “How are we going to get back to Meltia, fast?”

“My ship and my crew stand ready to assist you, Captain,” the Rosarian said. “Though I am still not sure what the nature of your emergency is.”

“Warm up your flip drive, then,” Brook said. “Take us as close as you can to Telahmir.”

The lieutenant commander departed quickly, but Brook knew it would not be enough. The frigate’s flip drive could only take them to the fringes of Meltia’s atmosphere. They would have to make the descent to the surface in the shuttle, which would still take a lot longer than flying a hovercar from the Legislature to the Emergency Service.

If the courier was able to use a hovercar.

Brook sprinted back into the shuttle, leaving JP scribbling something on a personal screen. She quickly found her transceiver, linked to the ship’s computer, and removed it.

“Later, Arriet.” She closed that communications channel and opened another to the Telahmir Security Command Center. TeSeComm was responsible for a range of duties centered on keeping the capital of the Meltian Republic safe.

Including restricting air traffic.

“TeSeComm, this is Jareyn Brook, Captain of the Interstellar Emergency Service,” she said as soon as they picked up her query. “We have an emergency situation, and I need to ground all non-military, non-Emergency-Service air traffic over Telahmir.”

“Yes, Captain,” came the reply. “Should we take additional precautionary measures?”

“Not at the moment.” Brook cut the communications channel and returned to the hangar. In another city, this move might have halted the delivery of the order completely, but in Telahmir, with its famous pedestrian culture, the grounding would just slow the courier down.

When she stepped out of the shuttle, Brook saw through the Airshell field that protected the hangar that Meltia had grown a thousand times closer, its red-brown surface now taking up her entire field of view. The lieutenant commander must have activated the ship’s flip drive while Brook was inside, shifting the vessel superluminally across space.

JP thrust his personal screen into her hands, and Brook looked down to find their fully filled out contest petition. “Good wo...”

“Captain?” JP asked.

Brook’s eyes had wandered to a Meltian Guard interceptor that was sitting next to their police shuttle. “We do still need to get down to Telahmir quickly, right?”

“Likely.” JP turned, following her line of sight. “Captain, with all due respect, you can’t fly an interceptor.”

“That was a Foonyan interceptor,” Brook said, “and the weather was atrocious. This one’s Meltian, so it’s got a standard throttle-and-stick setup‌—‌it’s basically just a really fast hovercar. Hey! You!”

The pilot Brook yelled at turned around.

“Can we borrow this?”

“Under standard operating procedure, absolutely not,” the pilot said, “but this is an emergency, and the CO did say we should help you...”

Brook shot a sideways glance at JP. “Is that a plausible interpretation of his commanding officer’s words?”

“I’d say so,” JP said.

“Great.” Brook clambered into the interceptor.

“All you have to do is bring that petition to the front desk,” JP said. “Or anyone in the organization. So long as you beat the Legislature’s courier there, you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks.” Brook wedged the personal screen between her legs as she warmed up the interceptor. Realizing that if this stunt went wrong, these words might be her last to JP, she added, “For everything.”

Brook sealed the interceptor’s cockpit. The control scheme was indeed centered on the universal throttle-and-stick system, albeit surrounded by a plethora of controls she did not recognize, so she was able to gingerly lift the craft off the hangar floor and out of the command frigate.

Nose pointed down at Telahmir, Brook shoved the throttle forward. The surface of the planet leaped up toward her. Judging by the rate at which isolated clouds were blurring past her, Brook knew that without the normalizing force of the interceptor’s artificial gravity, she would be unconscious if not dead. Still, she kept the throttle at the interceptor’s maximum velocity until the spires of Telahmir spread out below her. She then pulled it all the way back, firing full retrograde.

Her descent slowed noticeably‌—‌but not as much as she had hoped. The spires continued to rise up, like spikes coming to impale her tiny ship. Brook was confident that no civilian craft would be allowed to go this fast this low over Telahmir, but she was in a Meltian Guard interceptor, so ostensibly she knew what she was doing. Brook spotted the Emergency Service’s headquarters‌—‌three boxy buildings in a U-shape around a marble-rimmed pond‌—‌and adjusted her course to come down in the middle of it. Not that doing so helped her with her velocity problem.

Brook knew real interceptor pilots executed insanely-high-acceleration turns routinely during combat, but she was not getting anywhere near that kind of thrust‌—‌because she was using her retrograde thrusters.

Brook flipped the interceptor around, pointing its nose and tiny retrograde thrusters toward the sky while firing her powerful main thruster to push her away from the ground.

Her descent slowed considerably. She was falling past the Emergency Service’s building‌—‌there were meters left until the ground. Then a white gas flowed up and over her interceptor.

Thud.

Brook shut off the interceptor’s thrusters as the ship settled, butt-first, against the ground. She unsealed the cockpit and swung herself out of the interceptor as the white gas dissipated.

Not white gas‌—‌ steam . Brook had landed in the center of the Emergency Service’s pond, vaporizing it with her thrusters in the process.

A Meltian man in a suit‌—‌the courier from the Legislature‌—‌was gawking at her from behind the low stone wall that had been the rim of the water feature a few seconds ago. The decorative barrier must have protected him from the worst of the steam.

“Good morning, sir.” Brook retrieved JP’s personal screen from the interceptor and clambered out of the former pond, heading for the front door to the central Emergency Service building.

As if suddenly remembering his job, the courier stumbled after her. Inside, the Emergency Service receptionist‌—‌a male Archavian like JP‌—‌was just as speechless as the Legislature man.

“Good morning to you, too,” Brook said.

The courier produced a small personal screen from his pocket. “I have an order from the Meltian Republic Legislature Subcommittee on‌—‌”

“And I have a petition to contest that order.” Brook set JP’s screen on the receptionist’s desk.

The receptionist looked from one screen to the other. “Uh‌—‌”

“Is everything in order?” Brook asked. If this document went through, she could fly back up to the Boneyard, start up their new ship, and flip over to the Erian solar system to pick up the rest of her crew‌—‌she trusted JP to clean up any legal aftermath. Unless Griffin was willing to physically come after them‌—‌which Brook highly doubted‌—‌they would be free of his influence.

The receptionist took JP’s screen gingerly and scrolled through the document it presented. After a minute, he said, “Everything... except on this document, where you receive ownership of the vessel from the Boneyard, you, ah, you need to give it a name.”