“Well...um…”

  “And another thing. Why is it that men like you insist that they are the universe’s answer to all of a womankind’s problems?”

  “Um…”

  M09 returned with a glass of whiskey on the rocks and placed it down in front of the female captain.

  Thank the Gods.

  “Your drinks.”

  The android had barely pulled its mechanical hand away from the glass before she snatched it from the bar and gulped down the drink.

  “Bad day?” I asked.

  A glint of a sad memory momentarily revealed itself in her eyes. “Just a tiny bit,” she said, nodding.

  M09 placed two half-pints of ale on the bar, poured a shot of whiskey into each glass then dropped a separate shot of tequila into each before pushing them across the bar. The female captain chugged the shooter in one gulp then slammed the empty glass down on the bar top and let out a loud belch.

  “You’re so cute I could put you in my pocket,” I blurted without thinking.

  “I swear to all the gods of the universe that if you say one more thing to me, I will stab you in the kidney.” She slammed back my drink in one gulp then stormed off in a huff. I couldn’t help myself. I turned and watched her shapely posterior as she made her way to a dark corner of the Black Box.

  I glanced around the dimly lit lounge. A few booths down sat a human couple with what looked like an Elowan child perched on the guy's shoulder. On the opposite side of the lounge, a pair of Thrynn and a large Velox sat huddled around a box that glowed and sparked from the open lid.

  The things you see on Starport.

  I turned back to the android bartender. “Give me a beer, Sparky.”

  “Coming right up, sir.” The android placed a new glass on the bar top with efficient timing and poured my beer. “Captain Kenneson seems quite upset this evening, sir.”

  “Captain Kenneson?”

  “Yes sir. The female captain you were just conversing with.”

  I glanced over my shoulder in the direction she’d gone. I wasn’t sure, but it almost looked like she was crying.

  I turned back to the android and sipped at my beer. “Any idea what’s wrong with her?”

  “I fear, I do not. She was about to reveal her woes when you arrived.”

  Just my luck, bad timing.

  I laughed into my glass and took another long sip. “I don’t suppose you know what her first name is, do you?”

  “Dinah, sir. Captain Dinah Kenneson.”

  Strange, exotic, and a vulnerable vixen to boot.

  “Dinah,” I said slowly then looked up at M09. “Rolls easily off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  The shrill sound of a bosun's whistle came across the station’s intercoms. “Captain Blake Daniels, report to Operations immediately for orientation.”

  “Shit,” I said, choking on my beer. “What time is it?”

  “Thirteen thirty, sir.”

  “Oh, this is going to go over well. Late for my first day on the job.”

  I dropped from the barstool then stopped and glanced back to the booth where Dinah sat. Sure looks like she’s crying to me. I turned back to M09. “Send a beer and a whiskey chaser to Captain Kenneson on me,” I said then hurried out of the lounge.

  “I never thought I’d see the day that the great Blake Daniels would be slumming with the rest of us graduates from the academy to pin on his captain’s bars.” Rodney Ware slapped me across the shoulder then stepped around to the front of the personnel console. “I mean, it’s not like you really had to do the work or anything. Did you, Daniels? Not when Daddy is the relations liaison between Arth and Interstel.”

  I laughed and glared at him. “Piss off, Rodney.”

  “Yeah, piss off, Rodney.”

  My buddy and classmate Stephen Rogers stepped in, shoving Rodney away from the console. His roommate, and member of our graduating class, Michael Gams stepped in between Rogers and me. He squared off with Rodney like he was about to lower his shoulder and charge. He looked like one of the biggest and meanest Nyssball linemen I’d ever seen.

  “Beat it, Rodney!” Gams growled.

  Rogers stepped up and shoved Rodney toward the personnel office doors. “No one put in a request for an arrogant asshole crewmember.”

  Rodney threw his hands up in defense as he backed away toward the doors. “It sure would be unfortunate if we happened to run into each other out there in the black. Now wouldn’t it, Daniels?”

  “For you, maybe,” Gams growled.

  Rodney flashed an angry grin, as he flipped me off and backed out of the entrance.

  Gams spun on his heel and sucker punched me in the gut. I doubled over, gasping for breath.

  “What in the hells was that for?” I asked, coughing.

  Rogers leaned over so he could look me in the eye. “You landed one of the new Intrepid-class frigates and didn’t tell us?”

  “Um…yeah. I thought you might be a little pissed.”

  “You’re damned right we’re pissed,” Gams added.

  Rogers laughed and slapped me on the back. “But we’re excited for you at the same time, Buddy.”

  Gams pulled me upright and punched me in the shoulder. He must have hit a nerve with that punch because pain shot down my arm to the tip of my pinky finger. As hard as he hit me, I was sure it would leave a nice bruise that would show up tomorrow. “Yup. And proud of you, you lucky son of a groum’r.”

  “Really?” I coughed a fake laugh.

  “Yeah, Buddy.” Rogers slapped me on the back again. “We’re damned proud, and if we didn’t have commands of our own, we’d be the first to sign on as crew.”

  I shook my head, unsure what I had just heard. “Wait? Both of you got your own ships?”

  Rogers and Gams both grinned wide. “Sure did.”

  “I lucked out since I need to keep a close eye on my folks,” Gams said. “I’ve been given command of a transport running freight and passengers from Arth to Starport and back again.”

  “And I,” Rogers said, breaking in, “will be supplying the populous with a particularly important and highly honorable task. I will be transporting colonists and their precious belongings to the newly discovered colony worlds that pioneering starship captains like yourself, manage to discover out there in the black.”

  “That is amazing news! Congrats to both of you! When do you launch?”

  “I’m leaving first thing in the morning,” Gams said. “All that’s left to do is to meet the hired crew.”

  “What about you?” I asked Rogers.

  “It’ll be a few weeks still. She’s one of those newer Terre Haute class transports. According to the dockmaster, my ship was towed in with some severe battle damage a few weeks back, but she was repairable. All hands on board were lost, but her cargo was more than enough to pay Interstel for the repairs. I picked her up at one hell of a discount.”

  “Battle damage?” I’m sure the look that I gave Rogers was a jumble of emotions somewhere between confusion and fear since my guts suddenly twisted at the thought of being alone in deep space with no hope of backup.

  “Why would anyone leave the cargo intact?” Gams asked.

  Rogers shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Did Interstel know what happened to her?” I asked.

  “Not much more than they have lost more than a few ships in that region.”

  “Where was it found?

  “A few parsecs upspin from here.”

  “Did you have trouble finding a crew?”

  “No,” Rogers said, shaking his head. “Why would I?”

  “People died on that ship.”

  “Oh that,” Rogers said with a dismissive wave. “I renamed her the Stormhaven, and just didn’t say anything to the new hires about her past.”

  “What about you?” Gams asked. “What kind of crew did you hire?”

  A glimpse of movement in the corridor outside of the personnel office caught my attention. I looked up through the large port windows lining the wall of the personnel office and spotted Captain Dinah Kenneson. I tracked her as she stormed by. Color ran up her neck all the way to her ears and the look she wore was a new level of angry from the one she had worn earlier back at the lounge. “I wouldn’t mind having her on my crew,” I said to myself.

  “That’s a great big negative there, Buddy,” Rogers said. “You don’t want anything to do with Krabby Kenneson. She’ll chew you up and spit you out before you know it.”

  I shook my head and looked over at Rogers. “She can’t be that bad.”

  “She’s a boomer,” Gams added.

  “Yeah,” Rogers continued. “She was born and raised on one of the old Euripides-class transports.”

  “From what I heard she’s had The Swinging Miss upgraded with the new super-photonic drive systems so she can do these colony runs. I was told that she spent a mint on it.”

  I walked over to the port window and watched her stomp away down the corridor toward the docking bay. “Maybe that’s what’s got her so wound up then,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Trust me. Just forget her and you’ll be so much better off. So, what kind of crew did you get?” Gams asked, changing the topic.

  “I hadn’t yet. I was just about to hire them before you guys showed up.”

  “If you can afford it, there was this brilliantly genius-level science officer in there, and I have it on good authority that any ship would be lucky to have her since she holds doctorates in six major fields of science.”

  “Wow,” I said with a gasp. “I’ll keep that in mind. But if she’s that good, then why hasn’t she been snagged yet?”

  Rogers shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “No worries. I have a plan.”

  “Uh huh,” Rogers said.

  “Trust me. I know what I need without spending any more than I have to.”

  “Any ideas of where you’re heading yet?”

  I let out a long sigh. “No clue. I heard there’s some decent mining available in system, so I thought about maybe starting off there.

  Rogers looked around to make sure no one else was near and leaned in close. “I heard that a survey team found a few old empire ruins on the second planet of the neighboring star system. Might be worth checking out.”

  I looked up and smiled at Rogers. “It might be, at that.”

  Rogers took my hand and shook it. “May the Rock of Truth shine brightly upon you,” he said, then punched me in the shoulder once more for good luck.

  “Captain Daniels,” a robotic voice called over the ship’s intercoms.

  “What is it, NV?” I fired at the three-headed xenomorph charging at me then ducked behind a boulder. “I’m a little busy at the moment.” I fired again, scoring a direct hit to two of the heads. The third head snapped at me, nearly biting down on the barrel of my combat rifle. I fired again point-blank down the creature’s throat. The back of its head exploded in one round of burst fire.

  “Woohoo! That’s right! Die you dirty son of a groum’r! You never stood a chance against Captain Daniels the Destroyer! Yeah!”

  I backed out of the software then removed the sim-helmet and placed it back into the charging dock. “Alright, go ahead NV.”

  “We have arrived in orbit, sir.”

  “Really?” I rubbed at the marks across my face left by the sim-helmet and found a scruff of beard. I stepped into the lavatory outside the ship’s common room. To my surprise, the man in the mirror had a few days' growth on his face.

  “Hey, NV, what day is it?” I scratched my chin.

  “Thursday, sir.”

  I stepped out of the lavatory and pulled my robe together, tying it around my waist. “When did we leave port?”

  “Six days ago, sir.”

  I scratched at my muss of hair as I made my way to the galley and punched in the code for a triple chocolate stimcaff into the food printer. “How long was I playing that game?”

  “Five days, six hours, thirty-two minutes, and fifteen seconds sir.”

  “Captain, as the ship’s medical officer, I must insist that you take some time to sleep prior to making any command decisions,” a similar robotic voice demanded.

  The food printer beeped.

  Five days…

  “Was that you, NV?”

  “No sir, that was MD84735.”

  “It’s way too easy to get distracted without anyone else on the ship.” I took the mug of stim-cafe from the food printer and made my way to the lift. “NV.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please set a reminder to save and shut down the game system every six hours if I’m playing.”

  “Request recorded, sir.”

  “I must insist that you get some rest, Captain,” MD said.

  I sipped at the steaming hot drink and thought about it for a minute. We’re orbiting an alien planet without anyone else in sight. I could probably sleep another day away, but there are assholes like Rodney who’d jump a man’s claim without thinking twice just to screw me over.

  “Sorry MD, Captains’ prerogative.” I sipped at the hot chocolatey drink as I exited the lift and hurried onto the bridge. “I don’t need a robot telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.”

  “Android, sir,” MD said over the intercoms.

  “Not much difference in my opinion. There’s enough time for sleep in the grave. Glory awaits us. Now, what do we have, SC?”

  “Sensors are picking up a large quantity of biomass along with substantial quantities of chromium and promethium. Oxygen nitrogen atmosphere with eighty percent of the planet's surface covered in water and global temperatures are comparable to Arth. It appears that this planet falls within the criteria of a colony world, sir.” SC, my science android, replied in its tinny robotic voice.

  I laughed then slid into the captain’s chair. Activating the command readout, I reviewed the scan details for myself. What kind of stupid-luck break was this? “Has this planet been logged for colonization by anyone else?”

  CO turned in its seat to look back at me from the communications station. “There are no claim beacons currently in orbit, sir.”

  “Lady luck, shine down on me,” I said in a sing-song tone as I entered my command codes to access the planetary claim screen.

  SC’s head spun around like a demonically possessed doll and stared at me with those glowing yellow eye slits. “May I remind the captain that there is a penalty incurred if the planet is found unsuitable for colonization.”

  “But you said yourself that it fell within the criteria for colonization, SC.”

  The yellow eye slits flickered for a moment. “I did, sir,” SC said, then turned its head to face forward at the station again. A chill ran down my spine as the others did likewise to face their own consoles.

  If we make enough on this haul, I could upgrade the crew so they weren’t so creepy.

  “Well that’s good enough for me,” I said and entered my codes to launch a claim beacon.

  The readout beeped and displayed a message in large letters that filled the screen.

  Would you like to log this planet for colonization?

  I selected yes, then another command flashed across the screen. The cursor slowly blinked as it awaited my reply.

  Name this planet

  “I get to name the planet?”

  SC’s head spun around to face me once again. “Per Interstel’s standard command protocols regarding claims and salvage, section thirty-two, sub-section five, paragraph nineteen, you may suggest a designation for any claim if you wish. If no new designation is submitted it will be assigned the next sequential claim number as its official designation per date and time of the submitted claim.”

  I sipped at my mug of stimcaff as I drifted off in thought. I couldn’t just willy-nilly throw out any name. This was an incredibly important decision that needed to have deep meaning and connection for the souls who would settle the planet and make it their new home. Then it hit me, and I entered a name that invoked images of vivid beauty in my mind. A name connected to the vision of eyes as bright and blue as the shimmering waters of the planet below.

  “Dinah.”

  “I don’t know which is better, that new ship smell or the smell of a brand-new terrain vehicle that still has the stickers in the window.” I forced in a deep breath and enjoyed the heavenly mixture of new plastics and polyurethane coatings that permeated the cabin of the terrain vehicle. It was the one thing that I could enjoy at the moment under the planet's heavier than normal gravity. I stepped into the cockpit of the terrain vehicle from the main cabin and slid into the driver’s seat.

  “That sure is one hell of a view,” I mumbled to myself and drew in another deep breath as I stared out through the windscreen. Less than a kilometer away I could see our ship, the Vulnerable Vixen, or officially, the ISS Vixen, where we had landed on a rocky grey beach along the shoreline of the planet’s massive equatorial ocean. Turquoise waves lapped against tumbled stones and granite-like boulders that littered the beach. Small shrubs and tufts of rubbery grasses dotted the otherwise dark-purple landscape. What we initially thought was a rocky crust turned out to be a carpet-like organism protected by a hardened outer shell. After a few tests, SC determined the organism to be some sort of fungoid, harmless, and useless otherwise.

  “How’s the digging coming, SC?”

  “Progressing at the expected rate, sir,” SC reported. “This deposit should yield approximately three cubic meters of promethium once we have completed the extraction process.”

  I accessed the ship’s computer from the main console of the terrain vehicle and pulled up the Starport ore price list.

  “Promethium was running three hundred MU per cubic meter when we left Starport. That’s not a bad haul on top of the load of chromium and platinum that we picked up in that mountain range to the east.”

  “No sir, I suppose it is not,” one of the androids replied.

  “I really need to change each of your voice synthesizers, so I know who the hell is talking.”

  I made my way out of the cockpit and down the loading ramp. The purple fungoid carpet crunched underfoot like ice-encrusted snow. The place didn’t look bad, just strange in that odd teenage psychedelic kinda way. A smell that floated in on the light breeze was a warm, familiar, earthy sort of thing that I just couldn’t put my finger on. The air was hot and heavy with humidity. I surveyed the landscape of rolling hills and spotted an area that looked like a worn path just down the slope to our west.