Tyche's Hope Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Job of a Lifetime

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Enjoy this book? You can change the world!

  About the Author

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  EXCERPT: TYCHE'S FURY

  A Saki Deal

  TYCHE'S HOPE

  Richard Parry

  TYCHE'S HOPE copyright © 2018 Richard Parry.

  Cover design copyright © 2018 Mondegreen.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9951090-2-5

  First edition.

  No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. Piracy, much as it sounds like a cool thing done at sea with a lot of, “Me hearties!” commentary, is a dick move. It gives nothing back to the people who made this book, so don’t do it. Support original works: purchase only authorized editions.

  While we’re here, what you’re holding is a work of fiction created by a professional liar. It is not done in an edgy documentary style with recovered footage. Pretty much everything in here was made up by the author so you could enjoy a story about the world being saved through action scenes and witty dialog. No people were used as templates, serial numbers filed off for anonymity: let’s be honest, October Kohl couldn’t be based on anyone real. Any resemblance to humans you know (alive) or have known (dead) is coincidental.

  Details on how to get your FREE STARTER LIBRARY can be found at the end of this book.

  Find out more about Richard Parry at mondegreen.co

  Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

  For Mike, and your others-first view of the world.

  THE JOB OF A LIFETIME

  TRITON STATION. THE ad said Job of a Lifetime! without the usual specifics an Engineer might care for. That usually meant the job was better than you could imagine. This one might be, one day. But Hope would have to get the Number Four booster fixed first, or they’d tumble down Triton’s gravity well.

  Gravity was one thing you couldn’t bargain with. Shake your fist, like Hope’s Engineers were doing, and gravity would shrug — meh, planets, what can you do? — and just do what gravity did.

  Hope’s Engineers were fighting about who would fix the booster, and who would make up for the lost time. Hope suspected they also argued about who would break the bad news to the boss.

  Which was her. Hope Baedeker, Engineer First Class. Boss of Project Redemption. Chief Engineer of Triton Station. Who’d have thought? She was surprised to land that Job of a Lifetime!, but Reiko had pressed soft lips to Hope’s forehead and said, Baby, of course they chose you.

  “Um,” said Hope.

  Bobbi Harford, short and stocky to Hope’s waifish frame, ignored her. Bobbi was mid-tirade, her voice rising several octaves — difficult when your voice was like a gruff version of the Ghost of Christmas Past to start with — as she shouted at Cory Batham. “Batham, you suck. How the hell did you get your Shingle? Was it one of those special deals where you sent in four Core Lager proofs of purchase and got it on the next merchant bridgeliner to drop in-system?” The arms of the rig Bobbi wore gesticulated and clacked as she shouted.

  Hope winced. Cory Batham was a renowned alcoholic, and Core Lager — apparently from the core worlds, a fact Hope had never tracked down on account of the beer tasting like a degreaser she’d got in her mouth that one time — was his favorite abusive pastime. To be fair to Bobbi — and Hope wanted to be fair, this being her first boss job and all — Cory smelled more of Core Lager than grease and ozone and the other usual smells Engineers wore like a cologne. He didn’t have a rig on, just a rumpled shirt over his pot belly. Not even a ship suit. “Um,” she said again. “If I could—”

  “Goddamn your attitude!” said Cory, a fist up in Bobbi’s face like he wanted to start something, before running out of steam like he couldn’t remember how things were started. Hope had noticed the man didn’t run like all his drives were hot when he’d had a few. She had talked to him before about it — Cory, you know you might get everyone killed, right? — and he’d agreed to do better. In this instance, he might have been trying: he wasn’t supposed to be on-shift. Which meant he was supposed to have fixed Number Four before grabbing another Core Lager to chase down his dreams of death by cirrhosis. Hope thought this might have been a good time to step into the conversation again, but Cory rallied. “If you’d only done what you were supposed to—”

  “This isn’t about me, Batham, and you know it. It’s about you, and that Number Four booster. Now my crew’s gotta fix it, or this whole station will crash and burn on Triton’s surface. We’ll be behind production, and it’ll be your fault. But you’ve logged the booster as fixed, so you’re sitting pretty, ain’t that right?” Bobbi paused, wiping spittle from her chin.

  Hope frowned. Logged the booster as fixed. She’d known Cory for about as long as any of them. He was as average as an Engineer with a Shingle could get, but still better than anyone outside the Guild. He hit Core Lager pretty hard, but she’d never found him to be a liar and a cheat. If he said he’d fixed the booster, the booster was fixed. She stepped off to the side, brushing a strand of pink hair out of her face. They would shout at each other for a while, which would give Hope some time to check the booster out.

  She approached the controls and ducting station of Number Four. The big ornery booster was a couple klicks below Hope, hanging out in space under Triton Station along with all its friends. The ducting station supplied reactants, coolants, and any other ants useful to the operation of a fusion booster. In turn, diagnostics were ferried up to this console. Number Four had been shipped here from Titan. Titan was the Republic’s shiny new shipyard, all gleaming spans of metal, ready to deliver a new Navy for a war already over. Rumor had it they would be cranking out bridgeliners like candy on Halloween. But before they got on to minting new ships that never broke, and were thus a boring place for an Engineer, they’d rushed out this new booster for Triton Station.

  It broke often, mostly on days ending in Y.

  Red lights littered the diagnostic console. Pretty much everything reported as a fractured mess. Hope sighed. It was super unlikely that many things would go wrong on a booster at the same time. Just look at it. Power couplings, blown. The phase inverters were shot. The main feed from the reactor was — and this was ridiculous — plain ol’ missing. Hope pulled her visor down, her rig’s diagnostics clicking on. Wireframes of conduit overlaid the ducting on her HUD. She frowned for a few seconds, then walked to a panel. Her rig’s arms reached out, opened the panel, and then pulled out the breaker for the diagnostics hub. ‘Breaker’ was a generous term for it. This one was mostly slag, and what wasn’t slag was pure corrosion. Hope sighed, dropping the breaker, and grabbing a new one from a nearby rack. She slotted it, the console’s lights flicking for a second before shining a promising green across the board.

  Hope turned back to Bobbi and Cory, who still yelled at each other, but now at the same time. Hope cleared her throat, and when that didn’t have an effect, she shouted, “Hey!”

  Neither of them took notice. Hope thought about the Shingle in her cabin, the words DO GREAT THINGS etched on the surface, and thought, This is not a great thing. She turned back to the ducting station, slapping the console’s START control. There was a pause, then a mighty noise like the roar of a lion the size of a planet shook the room as the booster fired. If they’d been anywhere near Number Four itself, they’d have been atomized, and what wasn’t atomized would be deaf forever.
Noise still vibrated its way up the booster’s support struts, shaking the floor, rattling everything that shouldn’t rattle, and sounding like the end of the world. Hope was ready for this, her rig’s visor protecting her hearing just fine.

  After a couple of seconds, she turned the booster off. “Hi,” she said to the stunned Bobbi and Cory. “Look, I know your argument is very important to both of you, but what’s important to me is that we work well together.” They blinked at her. Hope wasn’t sure if they’d been temporarily deafened by the booster’s firing, so she kept going hoping something would make it through. “Cory, I’m glad you fixed the booster, but you missed the corroded breaker.”

  Bobbi’s frame straightened. “I knew it—”

  “And Bobbi,” said Hope, “the thing is, an infant — a literal infant, like a human baby, with stubby legs—”

  “I know what an infant is.”

  “An infant could have found the blown breaker. I took a little less than fifteen seconds. It’s not an Engineering problem. It’s a maintenance issue.” Hope watched as Bobbi sucked air in, preparing herself for a tirade. Hope held up a hand, one of her rig’s articulators mirroring the motion. “If you weren’t so angry at each other, you’d have found it. And then we’d be making more money. Don’t you like money?” Money wasn’t Hope’s prime motivator, but she’d worked out early on it’s why most of her crew were here.

  “I like money enough, I guess,” said Cory.

  “Money’s fine,” said Bobbi.

  “I know you don’t like working for someone who’s young,” said Hope. “I can’t help being young. But I want to do great things. Don’t you?”

  Both of them looked down. Cory sighed, speaking first. “It was my bad,” he said. “I should have found the breaker. I just … I hate fixing that damn booster.”

  “No, no, no,” said Bobbi. “Hope’s right. It was me, Cory. I should have taken five damn seconds to look it over.”

  “Fifteen,” said Hope. “It took me fifteen seconds.”

  “Yeah, but you’re half my age,” said Bobbi, a ghost of a grin hiding there somewhere. “Wouldn’t take me anywhere near that time. I shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked.”

  “Okay,” said Hope. “I’m glad we’re all good.”

  “I don’t mind working for someone young,” said Cory. “I just wish you’d make a mistake or two.”

  “I’m with him,” said Bobbi. “It’d be nice if you could break something accidentally-on-purpose. Just once.”

  “Okay,” said Hope again. She pushed pink hair out of her eyes. “I’ll go see about the fire in Landing Bay Twelve.” Hope turned, leaving Bobbi and Cory staring after her. She wasn’t great at people, but fires? She could deal with fires just fine.

  • • •

  Triton Station wasn’t new. It was old, which meant it was perfect. So many things went wrong, Hope was never wanting for something to do.

  But a fire in a landing bay? That was new.

  Triton Station was constructed using an older style than Titan’s. It was a big cylinder of metal floating in space — come on Hope, it’s not ‘floating,’ it’s ‘orbiting’ — above Triton. The booster array, sixty-four in total, pointed at Triton’s surface below them. Around the ring that made up Triton Station, great spans of metal stretched out skeletal fingers. Those fingers had birthed mighty Empire warships, before the Empire stopped empiring and was replaced with a new Republic. Hope was fine with all that in general principle, because the Republic wanted Engineers to fix all the things that broke during the war. Like Triton Station.

  Prior to the war ending, supposedly this place had pretty much up and died. Folk were surprised that the Empire had so few ships when push came to shove. The assumption being, what with Triton being the Empire’s major shipyard, everything here had to be broken.

  Hope hadn’t found much broken apart from that Number Four booster. Logs were scrubbed, no telling what happened while the Empire was in charge. So, she’d contacted the Republic and said, Well, no, there’s nothing wrong, it’s just that nothing’s really right, and they’d given her a new brief. They found her honesty refreshing, whatever that meant. Hope was an Engineer. Things were a thing, or not a thing. That was how it was.

  Project Redemption was the official name. Hope’s take on it: make everything better. Her brief was to remake the spans stretching out from Triton Station to allow a new class of ships to be made here. While the shipyards around Titan were taking up the slack, the natural metals imprisoned inside Triton’s crust were too rich a hoard to give up. If they could get her new design for the docking cradles up and running, the low cost of materials here would make this the best coin to tonnage ratio shipyard anywhere.

  She’d keep fixing that damn Number Four booster if that’s what it took. Although she wanted to replace the entire booster array with an Endless field system. Bobbi had said the math didn’t work right, but Hope had run the numbers and the math was fine. The problem was no one had put an Endless field system on something the size of Triton Station before. Do great things didn’t mean doing all the stuff other people had already done, just better. Thing is, it wasn’t that straightforward.

  Your problem is that things are breaking, since you took over. At least Reiko was here. She’d shipped to Triton with Hope, figuring on finding work here somewhere, somehow. It was a big place, home to almost fifty thousand souls. Reiko hadn’t found work yet, but it was early days, and Hope didn’t mind. She had Reiko, and that’s all that mattered.

  Hope entered a section of the station where red emergency lights were flashing against the walls. The fire would be up ahead. She sighed as she arrived at a closed bulkhead door, checking the panel for hazards on the other side. Atmosphere, yep. Grav was still on. No smoke or other airborne pollutants. Everything was fine. She keyed the console, the airlock hissing open. Ahead of her against the rimward wall of the station was the massive doors for Docking Bay Twelve, and next to those doors, Reiko Crous-Povilaitis. Hope paused, checking her rig’s HUD for a second. Yep, this is Docking Bay Twelve. Reiko being here made no sense. Reiko should have been in their apartment. And there was a fire here! What was she thinking?

  Hope hurried to Reiko’s side. “Baby? Reiko? What are you doing here?”

  Reiko startled, giving Hope a look that might have been guilty, and then looking at the closed doors for Docking Bay Twelve. Reiko spun the wedding ring on her finger before she spoke. “I heard there was a fire,” she said.

  “I don’t think there’s a fire,” said Hope. “If there was, next to it is the last place you should be.”

  “It’s okay for you to do dangerous things, but not me?” said Reiko.

  Hope took a few seconds to process that. “Yes,” she said, but not without careful consideration.

  “How can you—”

  “Because I am an Engineer,” said Hope. “I have a rig. If you put me in a cauldron of molten metal I would be okay for a little while. You are wearing the ship suit I got you last year. It’s nice! It suits you. It is not able to withstand molten metal.”

  Reiko brushed a strand of long black hair behind one ear. “I don’t like you doing dangerous things,” she said.

  “It’s not dangerous,” said Hope. “Unless behind that door is an open reactor or a fusion drive under thrust, I am literally safer than you. So, Reiko. Baby. Can you leave me to work?”

  Reiko thought about that, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” said Hope, waiting. After a couple more seconds, she said, “You should go now.”

  “In case there’s an open reactor or a fusion drive under thrust?” said Reiko, but not without a smile.

  “Or just an ordinary very hot fire,” said Hope. She leaned forward, kissing her wife. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I worry.”

  “I’ll be fine,” repeated Hope.

  “It’s just that—”

  “I will still be fine,” said Hope. She gave Reiko a gentle push, sending her off. Hope wa
tched Reiko go, and after a bulkhead had separated them with a satisfying clunk, Hope turned to Docking Bay Twelve’s closed door. The warning lights on the console said FIRE! They were lying or something else was amiss, because all the other signals said everything is fine. Atmosphere. No radiation leak. No abnormal temperature. If anything, it was a little cool in there, a gentle seventeen degrees Celsius on the sensors. Hope tapped on the panel, the door giving a mighty clunk before grinding open.

  As it opened, which took a long time on account of its size, Hope took in what was happening in Docking Bay Twelve. There was only one ship in there. Hope checked her rig’s console. The ship’s transponder hadn’t been responding, which is possibly why she had set her skids down in here. An Old Empire heavy lifter, if she had her ships right. It’d have a decent ICF reactor inside, twin fusion drives to kick the hard black plenty when there was need. And an Endless Drive, nice gravity inside, a little different from the bridgeliners that were all the rage now.

  Someone had painted a woman’s face large on the hull. The woman was winking, not in a sexual way, but like she had a big secret. While there wasn’t a functioning transponder, the letters on the side gave a name for anyone who could read. This was the Tyche.

  Hope liked it. Old, but good tech.

  And someone loved that ship, to keep her operating in space. Running an Old Empire ship would draw attention. Hope had some idea who that might be. Outside the cargo bay airlock was a man, hand on a blaster at his hip. She glimpsed gold: he had a metal hand, like a pirate from an old story. In front of him were four people.

  Natsumi Warn was Triton Station’s Chief. She was made of tempered ceramicrete, near as Hope could tell, except even tempered ceramicrete had more give in it. Natsumi had a blaster of her own out, pointed in no particular direction. Next to her stood Cesar Grosvenor, who was at pains to remind Hope at every opportunity he, not Hope, was Natsumi’s 2IC. Hope didn’t like Cesar very much, but since he controlled the policing arm of Triton Station, she took care around him. The Republic’s new justice was a sensitive thing, and while Hope wanted to think they’d leave a mere Engineer alone, bad people had killed a nice Emperor, and here they were.