Starlite
Jonathan Latt
Genre
SciFi
Publication Date
08/10/2022
Bevil Cyrex, adrift in space on a ship determined to kill him, stumbles across an ancient and abandoned space station called The Starlite.
Once on board the station he sets about repairing it, with the goal of opening up for business.
Along the way he befriends a possibly sociopathic, all powerful nanite swarm, who has decided to take on the appearance and mannerisms of his grandmother.
He must also contend with being hunted by an ex-mob enforcer looking for revenge, a handful of pirates and various threats of invasion, marriage and death.
All in all, Bevil would have to admit, things were really looking up.
Book Excerpt
Chapter 4
Bevil was halfway through his last week of mining. He’d secured enough quartz, silver and gold that he could definitely replace the lining on his ship. Hull lining was crucial for breaking atmosphere on a planet or moon. The last time he took the Bethany planet side he thought the hull was going to melt. By the time he landed, the inside of the ship was so hot he could barely stay conscious. Bevil ran from his ship, and even through his suit’s boots he could feel the heat from the deck.
The cabin took three days to cool back down to livable. Bevil knew that if he tried to take the ship through atmo- sphere again, he’d most likely burn up before he got halfway through entry.
But now, with this haul, he could have serious top shelf product applied to the Bethany.
The cobalt mining was going well. It was tough, but so far he’d been able to mine nearly twelve pounds of the stuff. If he could keep up this pace, he’d be leaving with roughly thirty pounds of it—more than enough to keep his ship loaded with fresh supplies for a year, maybe more. He could even get some countermeasures attached to the Bethany just in case he was ever attacked.
Living in space wasn’t like the dramas he watched on
TV or the movies. No laser fire dog fights or missile attacks. Ship to ship lasers and plasma weapons were outlawed centuries ago. Pistols and rifles were still legal but anyone stupid enough to have any type of beam weapon installed on their ship would find themselves in hot water with not only the Alliance, but the Star Folk as well. A laser shot in space kept going, forever, until it either dispersed into harmless nothing or made contact with something.
Long ago, so the story goes, a pirate was running from the Alliance. The Alliance locked onto the ship and fired, but at the last moment, the pirate slipped the lock and the bolt of lazed plasma zipped past. About six months later, that single shaft of deadly light collided with a refugee ship, puncturing the hull and killing everyone on board.
That was the end of lasers in space. Missiles were defi- nitely a potential threat. But all missiles were built with self-destruct mechanisms. A missile was fired at a ship, if it missed the target it could fly for maybe two minutes tops before self-destructing. The same thing was done with bullets and ship-to-ship heavy rounds.
There was a certain type of person who attacked ships with missiles, and they were not nice people. It basically came down to slavers if they couldn’t secure the ship and passengers. And psychopaths who thought flying through space and blowing stuff up was fun. Unfortunately there were more of those people than there should be.
Bevil had not been attacked or really harassed in any way since he’d had the Bethany. He’d had run-ins with people on stations and docks but out in space, never. However, he was always nervous when he closed his eyes to sleep. Proximity alarms were very helpful, but an automatic countermeasure system to keep him safe would be better. Shields would be best but that was just not feasible on Bevil’s budget.
Since discovering the depot on the moon, Bevil spent his free time snooping around the system. He would access the depot’s mainframe looking for an answer to the night’s question such as: what were the system specifics? What were the coded responses? What was the response to a craft that actually made it to the surface? And what was the response when it tried to leave?
The only thing on the moon was the depot, fifty robotic patrol units, and six ground to air assault cannons. Anything trying to land within the radius of the depot’s sensors without Alliance clearance would be shot out of the sky before the ship could break atmosphere. The sensors were attuned to a geosynchronous satellite, giving them very impressive range.
As long as Bevil was careful, poking around the system would not set off any alarms so that’s what he did. The first major thing he noticed was that the hardware running the depot had not been updated or replaced in nearly ten years, but the software was only a year or so old.
He also found, after going through thousands of lines of code, that there was either a case of epically lazy coding or intentional caution. While the assault cannons would shoot anything down that attempted to land without clearance, they never tracked anything when it left the moon. From the code, he was absolutely positive that any ship that made it to the surface, unauthorized or not, would not be tracked leaving. So if one could land illegally, the cannons would not fire when the ship departed. The robotic patrols were a definite problem, but a circuitous route from landing to depot would allow someone to avoid the ground sensors that would activate the patrols.
That’s when Bevil realized he was planning on robbing the depot. Not robbing it in reality, but in his mind, as a fantasy, as something to do. Put aside the fact that robbing an Alliance outpost, no matter how remote, was epically stupid. Forget the fact that if he tried to land the Bethany on the moon it would melt before he could break atmosphere. Never mind the cannons that would automatically lock on and blast his precious ship out of the sky the minute he couldn’t respond with the right random code. Forget all that. Even if he could get past all that, he still wouldn’t do it. But if he could do it, it’d be a hell of score.
Bevil did not consider himself a pirate or a thief. Though he was not above a little petty larceny now and again and didn’t even consider it a crime if done correctly. Ripping off an Alliance supply depot would fall into that category. A victimless crime by all standards. But the risk definitely did not equal the reward.
Still, every night he would go through lines of code, peeking for weaknesses and assessing the difficulty. He would mentally drool at the haul that would dwarf the profits from this mining operation of his. Food, medical supplies, clothes, blankets, weapons, machine parts, seeds, tools and on and on the list went.
Given the massive Alliance ship that showed up a couple weeks ago was a supply ship, the depot was fully stocked with “fresh” product.
Bevil got up at different times, mainly so he could observe the system to see if there were any major glitches in it that could (if he were so inclined) be exploited.
This morning Bevil was cleaning his mining equipment, watching out of the corner of his eye both the moon and the monitor displaying the depot’s internal workings. He was replacing a drill bit, while eating his breakfast. Breakfast being the same thing he’d been eating three times a day for the last month or so. A protein wafer, a veggie cake and a can of Carboneine.
Bevil watched the moon, lazily rotating in its orbit, the depot side of the moon turning slowly from night side to day side, and then it happened. The entire depot system shut down and began rebooting. The reboot happened twice. Then it did a systems check, twice. Between the reboot in which everything was down and the system checks in which all cannons and patrols were offline, it created a ten minute window in which one could easily land on the surface. Bevil sat in silence with a mouthful of Carboneine. He finally came to his senses, swallowed his drink and rechecked the system. And then checked it again.
The drill clanged loudly on the floor of the ship, but Bevil did not care. His attention was now completely on the depot.
Bevil’s fantasy of robbing it just became a potential reality.
About the Author
Jonathan Latt
I truly enjoy writing and it really never feels like work. Okay, mostly never feels like work.
Folks who have read my books have said they are definitely filled with words. These words are used in a very clever way to form sentences, which then form paragraphs until a page is just jammed packed with them. I do this repeatedly throughout my novels.
I am a lifelong lover of comic books, video games, science fiction and fantasy. My favorite authors include Robert Heinlein, William Gibson and Mark Twain.
Once the technology is perfected, I hope to own a robotic chimpanzee that will accompany me on many adventures. We will travel the globe solving crime, eating pie and saving the day.
I think it’s safe to assume that we’re gonna look pretty cool doing that.
