Beginners Space Guide – Excerpt

Chapter 1
Obligatory Mingling

My god, Sharon thought, why is every spaceship shaped like a penis?

The vessel displayed on the wallscreen was not yet visible. It would not be for hours, until her ship crossed the empty distance of space and they were close enough for merely human eyes to be useful. What she was looking at now was a blend of stock footage and magnification from her ship’s sensors, extrapolated into a convenient facsimile. The bow of the vessel was bulbous, the midsection ribbed, the engine an enormous cylinder. Two smallish rectangles were attached horizontally to the midsection like runners. It was set against a backdrop of asteroids.

Sharon considered the vessel. She amended her original assessment: a sex toy. So that was the legacy of the human race, traveling the stars in a never-ending variety of arrowheads, spearheads, swords, shafts, winged bullets, and other designs more than a little suggestive of her species’ most fundamental goal. It was also a military vessel. That might mean something. Or it could be the fault of her cocktail, the one in her hand. It was called a Consummate Professional. It tasted like apple juice and poor life choices. It was alright.

Truthfully, she didn’t care about the military vessel on that screen; certainly less than she cared about her cocktail. She was not in the military, she never had been. The same could not be said for others with whom she shared this gallery. Those who had been military — five to one in this crowd — were now consultants, advisors, defense contractors, or held seats on the boards of public-private think tanks, all telling the government that you couldn’t go wrong with bigger ships and bigger guns. So here they were, in snazzy dress with cocktails of their own, pretending to give their host their attention as he gushed about the newest addition to the arsenal.

“At two thousand meters, the Saturnus exceeds even the exemplary Jupiter-class carriers in length,” proclaimed the rotund man at the head of the room. He motioned above his head to the screen that filled the upper half of the back wall, on which the very impressive flying dildo was displayed. “By itself, the Saturnus wields fifty-eight of the new Trebuchet MAC guns, courtesy of our friends at Prometheus Arms,” he raised a hand toward an Indian man who was wearing sunglasses indoors for some reason, “and thirty-four multi-configuration missile tubes, which can launch anything from Galen-Laird’s Tempestuous line to Nümman’s swarming little Piranhas,” another hand, this time indicating two women, one large, one small, both overweight, “all of which is more than enough firepower to pound even a fortified pirate base into fine-grain dust. I think we all remember what happened to that little moon over in Epsilon Eridani.”

Sporadic laughter came and went through the gallery, polite, obligatory. Sharon turned ninety degrees to her left and set her empty cocktail glass on the end of the bar. “One more,” she told the bartender, while instructing herself, Only one more.

The rotund speaker was far from finished: “Now of course, Saturnus operates with a fleet, as does any carrier. But a battle-carrier, now that is made to lead the charge.” He was getting into it, jouncing in place like an excited child; it made his comb-over flop like the wing of a dead bird. “Saturnus is fully plated in Fairweather’s latest titanium-ceramic triple-weave armor — one hundred-fifty centimeters standard, and two hundred thick on the prow. Of course,” he waved a hand in a castoff gesture, “before anything can even reach the armor, it will have to get through the new ‘Iron Lens’ anti-artillery laser network, which our friends in…”

“Your drink, ma’am,” said the bartender.

“Actually, hold that for me,” Sharon decided rather abruptly. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said to Sharon’s back.

The gallery was a self-contained unit in the middle of the ship, a mahogany-lined box with crystal chandeliers, birds of paradise, and waiters gliding invisibly through the bedizened crowd to offer balls and puffs on silver trays. There were also — thank god — doors. The moment it closed behind her, Sharon’s world contracted to the gentle hiss of atmospheric recyclers in a black and white hallway. Her green jacket stood out here, a high-collared splash of color; she tried to ignore the fact that her hair matched the burgundy carpet.

She held a breath, then huffed it out in a brisk, “Okay.” She needed a minute to herself. She had never liked these kinds of functions, no matter their purpose nor who was hosting. She would prefer to spend the rest of this flight in her cabin… No, no good. She couldn’t avoid the MoD forever, especially after accepting his invitation. Besides, her cocktail was waiting.

Sharon headed toward the bow of the ship. She ignored the windows on her left because there was nothing out there to see: like Sol, Noah System was not in proximity to any interesting astronomical phenomena. A vast, black starscape was all they had. She passed the dining hall on her right — where staff were setting up for the next meal service — and took the staircase down to the cabins. Whoever designed this ship apparently tried to compensate for a lack of windows down here by adding more lighting overhead, and making the walls extra glossy. If the artificial gravity ever failed, she would have an easier time moving along the ceiling.

Her cabin was like someone had taken a first-class hotel suite and compressed it into a single room. The paneling and the table were all real wood; there had been a fruit basket, which she’d put in the fridge. She had her own window, a gel-bunk (with satin sheets) set in the left wall, and a lavatory/shower that was like a tiled coffin. Considering that, on her last interplanetary voyage, her quarters had been the size of a walk-in, this was astonishing. Sadly, this meant she was going to have to thank the MoD for inviting her. Again.

So — a moment to herself. Sharon crossed to the dining table, where an upward flick of her hand summoned a holoscreen at eye-level. The stars out her window shone with honey-colored luster through the hologram. She checked her messages, responded to the only one of immediate import, then glanced around wondering if there was anything else she should do. The lighting was an excellent approximation of mid-morning sunlight. She’d chosen an aroma package called Rising Sun: blossoms, and freshly-brewed green tea. It reminded her of that trip to Kyoto.

“Mirror,” Sharon told the holoscreen. The screen swapped for the face of a woman. Head to the left, head to the right: good bones, even if the nose was a little flat; dark eyes thoughtful, lips suggesting a secret; the eyebrows were sleek and not drawn on, that was important.

How old do you think I am? Sharon asks an imaginary suitor at a bar in Miami. Oh, one should not intrude upon a lady’s age, he replies in his suave Cuban accent. Humor me, she says, as she sips a drink with an umbrella in it. He looks her over with a critical eye, answers, Not a day over forty, señorita. Not a day over forty.

At least he’s a good liar, Sharon thought, as she brushed her hair back from her shoulders. She had let it grow too long, though it did go well with patterned jade. She’d put it up later. After the gallery. “Okay,” she told her reflection. She dismissed the screen and left her cabin.

Sharon noticed two things as she retraced her steps back to the gallery. The first was that the excessive glossing on the black and white walls had the effect of amplifying any other colors, such as the cerulean carpet underfoot. Blue: Deck Three, Passenger Quarters, Forward Section.

The second was that a child was walking toward her. Sharon blinked, puzzled, kept her own stride. There were children on board? Wait… hadn’t she seen one earlier? Right, when she had boarded the ship — god, was that only two days ago? — though Sharon was certain the one she’d seen then was a girl, the daughter of some important invitee. This was a boy coming toward her, his face buried in a handheld; no sound from it, so perhaps he was reading. Thin little guy he was, dressed as if to attend a pricey boarding school. He paid no more attention to Sharon than to move to his left so they did not collide.

She glanced down at him as they passed each other; interesting feeling, being the taller person; not a familiar perspective for her. She eyed his hair. Platinum blond. Could she pull that off? Maybe, if she cut it as short as his. “Excuse me,” Sharon said.

The boy stopped. His head came up from his handheld. He did not look back.

“Your collar’s turned up in back,” Sharon told him. “The tag’s sticking out.”

Nothing happened for a span of silent seconds. Then the boy reached back, fixed his shirt collar, said quietly, “Yes,” and walked away.

Quietly, Sharon noted, not shyly. “You’re welcome,” she replied in kind. She did not quite know, as she resumed her trek toward the stairs, why she was smiling. Maybe she had needed that bit of domesticity; her youngest niece used to run around like that all the time.

Back in the gallery, the military ship was still on display, the rotund speaker was still going on his little stage, and the guests were still pretending to care. The bartender must have seen Sharon coming because her Consummate Professional was waiting on the bar when she arrived. She accepted her drink with thanks — a bubbly chartreuse — then slipped her wristworn out of her sleeve and sent the bartender a nice tip. He’d earned it.

“…which is more than enough bandwidth to coordinate the Saturnus’ entire compliment of Peregrine combat drones.” A rotating schematic appeared in the upper right of the wallscreen, resembling a very sharp boomerang. “That’s a full Air Wing — seventy-two units total! Plus all the fabrication facilities to replace any combat losses in the field.” That bit of emphasis got some nods and oohing out of the crowd. The speaker seemed pleased. “And speaking of combat,” the rotund man added in a bad attempt at trying to be sly, “if you’re in this room, you probably have a passing familiarity with the APEX, our pride and joy. If not, the escape pods are located fore and aft.”

He actually earned a chuckle with that one. Sharon wondered who wrote it for him. The speaker — in grinning, dramatic fashion — raised his hand, and snapped his fingers. The image of the warship shrank into the corner opposite the drone schematic. Sharon did, in fact, recognize what replaced it: a suit of armor, standing tall, simultaneously sleek and boxy, with some rather oversized shoulder pads, and a really big rifle in each hand. Overcompensating, one might say. Sharon sighed. She sipped her cocktail.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Lynx, the latest model of Armored Personnel Exosuit.” The speaker was positively beaming now; it made his cheeks look like he was storing food for the winter. “It may not look too different from the Jaguars, but believe you me, this is a whole new beast. More powerful, more versatile, a host of upgrades to every system! Overhauls to fuel efficiency and ammo reserves let it last longer in the field than any model prior. Its most important feature you can see right here — courtesy of our good friends at Namdai & Co.”

Timed with his gesture at the oversized screen behind him, the rotating model flashed yellow, and a smaller window seemed to expand out of the model’s leg. Magnification: it was the same whitish-gray as the skin of the APEX model, though now visible was a fine array of interlocking plates, trailing away at a rising angle, subdividing smaller and smaller into hundreds of hexagons. Sharon thought it looked like tree bark.

“This,” oh how pleased that round man looked right now, “is the Harrier-500 Kinetic Redistribution Armor, a marvel of atomic chemistry and molecular engineering. A series of carbon-ceramic-zirconium composite plates cover a layer of shear-thickening gel, which itself covers a layer of titanium-graphene mesh. KRD armor has been proven to shrug off repeated impacts from CIPDs — that’s Close-In Perimeter Defenses — and the Harrier itself can even withstand a glancing blow from the Magnetic Acceleration Cannon of an Ares-class battleship!”

You have no idea what any of that means, Sharon thought.

Not that she, herself, knew the first thing about armor on towering war-robots that flew through space, but she wasn’t arrogant enough to pretend she did. Spending twenty standard years around people who actually knew what they were talking about had gifted her an eye for telling posers from the professionals and the nerds. First clue: the latter two had no need of an Optolens to tell you everything about their subject of interest. Wait for it… there. That green glint in the speaker’s left pupil, like an animal in the dark. An Optolens did that when the eye in question moved rapidly.

The speaker proceeded to rattle off a catalogue of statistics about the new war-bots that went right over Sharon’s head. While the audience feigned captivation, she flagged down a waiter and took a cheese puff-thing off his tray. God, it was real cheese. It did not go with her cocktail. She’d need wine for that. Maybe later. Applause: the speaker had finished. Great, she could get out of here, just as soon as she found the waitress with the little meatballs—

“Sharon! There you are.”

Fuck. Sharon turned toward the man making his way to her through the crowd; shaking hands and trading pleasantries, but coming, inexorably, toward her. Like a boulder, or a mother-in-law. “Joe!” Sharon said, all smiles. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Well, I was in the neighborhood. You look lovely, by the way.”

“Thank you. Wonderful speech. Truth be told I only understood about half of it, but the half I did understand was riveting.”

“Thank you, thank you,” the former-speaker demurred (if he thought demurring meant looking as pleased as the cat that ate the canary). “I’ll admit, I did enlist a little bit of help with the finer details — it really is a monumental project, after all — but after that, it was just practice, practice, practice. Nothing we haven’t done before.”

“Well, you certainly managed to make it look natural.”

“Oh, that.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “That requires extra practice.” He laughed.

Sharon pretended to. She wanted out of here. Everyone around them was looking at the man of the hour and, by consequence, looking at her too.

“But enough about me,” the man said suddenly, “there’s so many people I want you to meet.”

“Oh really, Joe, that’s not necessary,” Sharon began. Too late, he already had her by the elbow.

“Nonsense! I’ve been talking you up. Everyone’s just dying to meet you,” said Joseph Fetlock, Minister of Defense of the Federated Cooperative Republics.

They’re not the only ones, Sharon bemoaned.

Yet her smiling glamour did not slip, even as she knocked back the last of her cocktail and handed the empty glass to a passing waiter. As she was being led off for torture, she happened to catch the eye of the bartender. He raised his eyebrows and held up one finger. She nodded gravely. That young man was going to get a very large tip indeed.

The following eternity was a whirlwind of faces and fancy dress. A new suit or starlet would materialize before her, and Sharon would scarcely get out a hello before Minister Fetlock was performing a bubbling introduction for her: “Yes indeed, this is Sharon Donnell, our very own Minister of Colonial Development. Sharon, this is…” Then they were off to the next one.

I hate you, Sharon thought behind a mask of cheer, as Fetlock led her around to make acquaintance with people she had no intention of ever seeing again.

At least her new cocktail found its way to her. Sharon nursed it as Fetlock steered her through a cadre of think tank experts, all crew-cut men wearing exactly the same shade of black. Then there was a young woman who went on about spending policy with about as much gravity as gossip shared at a hairdresser. That one was followed by a curious little man who looked at Sharon as if she was missing the point about how truly important he was in the grand scheme of the cosmos — yes, that is impressive, Sharon nodded along, while inquiring innocently on whatever was to be done with so many gunships? No, I suppose one can never have too many.

After that was a pretty lawyer who spoke so fast it was impossible that she wasn’t on some kind of stimulant. Then there was a man in a turban who was rather keen on explaining that selling in bulk with a minor discount worked as well for munitions as it did for toilet paper or prawns. Then— why, here was that girl Sharon had seen when she’d boarded. Lovely little sprite, twelve or thirteen, with her family of course: mother, father, a brother who was perhaps a year the elder. Absurdly good-looking, the lot of them (it was kind of unfair, really). Chocolate-colored hair, perfect skin, winning smiles… Sharon knew she had seen them somewhere before.

“… our very own Minister of Colonial Development. Sharon,” Fetlock seemed especially delighted to make this introduction, “may I present the most capable Cromwells.”

Oh, duh. “A pleasure to meet you,” Sharon said, as she shook hands with the family of actors.

Young Marshal and Millie (Millicent, but, ew) had been in holos and streams since they were babies, and Lillian and Langdon had been acting since they were kids themselves. Between the four of them they’d done more films than series, all of a patriotic nature, and with such immortal names as Last Stand on Cairo Station, Swordbase Noble, Pelican Down, and Warden’s Cause (the one with that speech). Alamo Nova took itself so seriously it was almost a parody. And, of course, Sharon could never forget watching Spirit of Command with her sisters; take a drink whenever someone said the word “duty”; Sharon had thrown up.

“Really? They’re letting you film on the actual command deck?”

“Yes indeed they are, Miss Donnell,” Langdon Cromwell replied with such a smile that one might expect a cartoon sparkle to gleam off his tooth. “At first, it was going to be a facsimile. You know: set up some spare consoles, have the screens going, get some genuine crewmen in the background, nothing we haven’t done before. Oh, but then our dear friend Joe here,” Fetlock nearly buckled when Langdon the demigod clapped him on the shoulder, “gets wind of it, and insists — insists, this good man — that the scenes be as authentic as possible. Next thing I know, they’re redesigning half the shoot!”

Sharon barely got out a diplomatic, “That truly is something,” before Marshal and Millie started chattering about their own roles as command assistants… or pages, or something; they were excited and both talking at once, so it was little hard to tell. Meanwhile their mother — half-hidden behind her husband — was, with one hand, operating a micro-drone from her diamond-studded wristworn, sending it after every celebrity in range as stealthily as an assassin.

Sharon was not sure exactly when Fetlock disengaged her from the loquacious Cromwells, only that she felt rather drained by the encounter. She made a mental note to watch what she said around Lillian Cromwell: that drone of hers was a threat to national security.

They had made almost a full circuit around the gallery by now. Fetlock had lost none of his energy for this crowd, all of whom seemed ready to indulge him. Sharon was introduced to Fetlock’s pet doctor, an epidemiologist apparently; why the Minister of Defense had an epidemiologist in his retinue, Sharon had no idea. She had to admit the man did have dreamy hair, the kind of thick mane you just wanted to run your fingers through. Side by side, the doctor’s glorious locks made Fetlock’s hair look like something fished out of a shower drain.

We can fly through space and cure cancer. Why do you have a comb-over? Sharon thought at Fetlock’s crown. She doubted she would ever get an answer to that question.

Fetlock was introducing her to such-and-such vice president of marketing when a bout of vertigo hit Sharon like a smack across the brain. A twitch of facial muscles — easily mistaken for a smile of polite interest — was her only outward symptom. Ordinarily, she would have kept it to herself. “I’m so sorry, it was lovely to meet you, but will you please excuse me?” she said to the marketing-man, and turned away.

“Sharon? What is it? Are—are you feeling well?” Fetlock worried, glancing between her and the vice president of whatever.

She touched Fetlock’s arm. “Actually I’m not,” she confided. “I’m afraid it’s time for another inertia pill, and a bit of a lie-down.” She smiled reassuringly. “That’s what I get for being ‘one-in-a-million.’”

“Oh, no! Don’t think anything of it,” Fetlock assured her; his hair flapped as he shook his head. “You go take care of yourself. There’ll be plenty of time for you to meet everybody on the trip back home.”

Joy. “I’m sure. I’ll see you later, Joe.”

Sharon gave his arm a squeeze, then got out of there. One-in-a-million, her doctor had said. Thank god for that. Nausea notwithstanding, this minor condition made an excellent get-out-of-hell-free card. Back to her cabin! She did, however, stop to return her empty glass to the bar, and whisper to the bartender, “You and I are going to become very good friends.”