“The ancient ark ship Noah 2?” Ciarra asked.

  Xix nodded and clacked his mandibles. “The same.”

  “Could the Old Empire still exist?”

  “It couldn’t be,” I said. “The Empire fell apart over a thousand years ago.”

  “It could just be a design coincidence,” Xix said. “But if this ship is of an Old Empire design, then we might have a problem.”

  Ponoxse turned in her seat to face us. “If they are part of the Old Empire and ships have been disappearing in this region, then we could be violating their territorial boundaries.”

  “Sssir,” Ry interrupted. “They are hailing usss again.”

  “Sir,” Ciarra shouted. “They’ve armed their weapons and locked onto us, sir.”

  I slid into the command chair and secured myself with the restraints. “Evasive maneuvers! Get us out of here!”

  “Already on it, Captain,” Ponoxse replied as she pushed the ship to full power.

  Xix rushed over to the engineering station and secured himself.

  “Missiles inbound!” Ciarra announced.

  “Evasive maneuvers! Brace for impact!”

  The ship rocked hard and spun sickeningly to starboard followed by a second explosion.

  “Hull integrity down to eighty percent,” Xix announced. “We’ve lost primary power on deck four aft.”

  “Ponoxse,” I shouted. “This ship is brand new and theirs is maybe a thousand years old. They can outrun us, but can they outmaneuver us?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Ponoxse shouted in reply as another missile warning klaxon roared to life.

  “Six new contacts, sir,” Ciarra said. “Bearing one three six point two mark five five point nine.”

  Ponoxse nosed the ship over, rolled, and changed course away from the alien ship.

  “I might be able to boost our engine output, but I’ll have to do it from engineering,” Xix added as he rushed from the bridge.

  “Contacts are one kilometer out and closing, Captain,” Ciarra reported. “All six have changed course with us and are still in pursuit.”

  I tapped at the command display, glancing over the automated damage report.

  “What’s the status of the alien ship?”

  Ciarra brought up a tactical display on the main viewscreen. Both ships represented by approximated icons moved about the three-dimensional grid. Six small cone-shaped objects closed the distance behind the Vixen. “They are closing fast, sir. The alien ship’s course is unchanged and holding steady.”

  “Bring us around on a collision course with them and make sure those missiles are close behind.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Ciarra said. “Missiles are adjusting to our course corrections and still closing.”

  Ponoxse turned in her seat and stared back at me. Her antennae seemed to twitch anxiously. “Not to question your orders, sir; but shouldn’t we be moving away from the alien ship, not heading right for it?”

  I let out an unintentional laugh. “Probably, but I don’t see any other way out of this. There’s no way that we can outrun or outgun them. We just have to improvise.”

  “Do you mean to destroy them by killing all of us, sir?”

  “No, Specialist,” I retorted. “I mean to cripple them by shoving their missiles down their throats. Either turn around and follow my orders or get off of my bridge!”

  Ponoxse turned back to the helm console and adjusted our course. “Aye, sir. Changing course to intercept alien craft.”

  “Get us as close as you can then skim her top and dive away. Let’s see if those missiles will lock onto them instead of us.”

  This was crazy, but what else were we supposed to do? No weapons to speak of and the alien ship could out-accelerate us without even trying. We might have a fighting chance if there were a planet or something nearby where we could hide.

  “The missiles are following us, sir.”

  Target klaxons raged once more across the bridge.

  “New contacts,” Ciarra announced. “They’ve fired another pair of missiles.”

  “Ponoxse, can you avoid them?”

  The Velox helmsman laughed. Her mandibles clacked together. “Just hold on!”

  The ship rolled and corkscrewed to the left while diving away from the alien vessel. She then pulled up the nose sharply before rolling and corkscrewing back toward the alien vessel.

  “Missile impact in three…,” Ciarra shouted.

  Ponoxse tapped feverishly at the controls with all four of her hands. “Port docking thrusters engaged.”

  The ship sickeningly jinked sideways without warning then rolled left. My stomach churned from the maneuver. The added sound and smell of Ciarra emptying her stomach onto the deck of my bridge did not help me in the slightest. I swallowed hard and had just forced the bile back down when the ship shook from another impact.

  Ciarra grunted as she pulled herself upright and wiped her mouth. “We have damage to the lateral sensor array from that last impact. Ponoxse bought us some time with her fancy flying. The rest of those missiles are closing fast. Contact in five seconds.”

  “Ponoxse, do something!” I ordered.

  She turned around and silently stared back at me with the look of a predator about to devour its prey. If a Velox could express emotion, I would have sworn that look had been fueled by an angry hatred. She turned back to her console and the ship suddenly slid upward, pressing me down into my command chair.

  “Ponoxse,” Xix shouted over the ship’s intercoms.

  A tingle of hope rose up my spine. “I hope you have a miracle for us, Xix.”

  “I might.”

  “Go ahead, Xixxaphhy,” Ponoxse said.

  “Go to full power and you’ll have a ten-second hyperspace boost when you do.”

  I shook my head out of confusion. “But shouldn’t that tear us apart so close to a gravity well?”

  “It should, but I’ve diverted power to the inertial dampers and re-enforced the structural integrity field. That’s the best I can do so close to the alien ship. If it works, we might get away but the ship will probably take some heavy damage.”

  “Do it!”

  “Aye, Captain. Everyone hold onto something!”

  Ponoxse rolled the Vixen into an inverted position in relation to the alien vessel as we approached within meters of the other ship’s hull. The ship leapt forward as the universe momentarily blurred out of existence. Sparks erupted from a junction panel on the forward wall of the bridge.

  Emergency bulkheads slammed closed as alarms began to scream.

  “Hull breaches on deck two forward sensor maintenance compartment, in main engineering, and the TV parking garage,” Ciarra reported.

  Ponoxse half rose from her station. “By the blessed Grand Lovely, please be safe, Xixxaphhy,” she mumbled more to herself than anyone while fingering the crystal pendant that hung around her neck.

  “Captain,” Ciarra shouted. “I’m detecting six impacts against the alien vessel! Exiting engagement area, sir. We should be far enough away from that alien ship’s gravity well to fully enter hyperspace.”

  “Then punch it! Get us out of here, Ponoxse.”

  We limped along through hyperspace for the next week, repairing what systems that we could. Lacking all of the raw materials needed for repairs, not to mention a space dock we were limited on what we were capable of doing while out in the black. We had gotten the ship back to eighty-eight percent by the time we arrived on the outskirts of a G class star system at coordinates 143 x 115.

  Ciarra eagerly tapped through the data on her console as I entered the bridge.

  “What have we got, Ciarra?”

  Ciarra let out an excited giggle then said, “I’m picking up two planets. The first is in orbital position seven and looks like it’s a rocky world at six times ten to the power of twenty-two mass tons. The second planet is at position five and only three times ten to the twenty-first power mass tons.”

  She let out a long gasp then turned in her seat to look at me. Her face beaming with excitement.

  “I’m picking up a wide biosphere, sir. I can’t be absolutely certain from this distance, but it looks like the atmosphere may primarily be made up of oxygen and carbon dioxide with liquid water making up a majority of the planet’s surface.”

  “The data could be off,” I said.

  “It could be, but I’m pretty sure that I’m right. We’ll need to get into orbit or land to get more accurate scans.”

  Ponoxse let out a shrill trill. “The Rock of Truth has shone down upon us.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “And lady luck has finally turned in our favor.”

  Always on Duty

  By: Benjamin Tyler Smith

  “Put me in for a hundred.” Devon threw a red chip into the center of the table.

  Devon took a moment to scan his surroundings while the seventeen other players—Human and alien alike—considered whether to call, raise, or fold. He sat in a private booth in the Backroom, the largest illegal casino and speakeasy on Arth’s Starport. Beyond the one-way window that covered an entire wall, Devon could see the casino’s main floor. It was packed with sentients, mostly members of the four races of Arth, but the occasional extra-solar species could be seen mingling in the crowd. Android servers clad in tuxedos paced the floor, serving complimentary refreshments and answering questions. One stood near the private booths, a closed parasol in one gloved hand and a peaked cap covering its otherwise copper-colored face.

  To think all this is hidden away. The Backroom was located behind Chute ‘n Scoot, one of Starport’s laundromats. To the unsuspecting customer, Chute ‘n Scoot was a legitimate business with full-service cleaning, along with decontamination of EVA suits. Ads that read “Dirty Suit? Put it in the Chute!” were plastered all over the sprawling space station’s main levels, along with the aforementioned drop-off chutes. They also had a self-service area for local residents to use.

  It was here—if someone knew the right guy and the right password—that one could get into the Backroom, where all manner of illicit activities took place. Gambling, narcotics, black market trades, interspecies companionship, the works. The more profane the crime, the deeper into the building one had to go to find it. Devon currently sat in the outermost chamber, the speakeasy casino portion of the criminal enterprise.

  The dealer, a member of the insectoid Velox race who somehow managed to cut a dashing figure in his tuxedo, used his multiple appendages to dole the next cards out to the players still in the game. Tricardium used the equivalent of three decks of poker cards, with a subsequent increase in possible players. That meant a longer game and more losers in the end, but with the potential for a much larger payout to the eventual winner.

  Devon didn’t really care about the game, as his interest was in the gray scaled Thrynn seated next to him. He and the reptilian had used coded language in words and bets over the last few games to affect the exchange of several nubile maidens of a nearly extinct race of sentient meta-marsupials. They’d been stolen from an eccentric collector’s menagerie of cryogenically frozen exotics, and my employer was very interested in their well-being. All that was left was to hand over the creds and receive their storage coordinates.

  Devon slipped his hand into his pants pocket, where two small items were. He removed one, a dark-colored pouch with an adhesive activated by skin oil. He rubbed his thumb along the adhesive, then stuck the pouch to the underside of the table. He made a show of shuffling his cards, as if lining them up into a winning hand. Next to him, the Thrynn shifted his weight in the padded chair. His hand slipped beneath the table, and in a deft motion, he pocketed the pouch. A second later, Devon’s tablet buzzed softly from inside his jacket pocket.

  “Ela here,” a soft voice said into his earpiece. “Exchange made; coordinates delivered. We’re moving in.”

  The dealer ran them through two more games while Devon waited. More players folded and shuffled out the door with what was left of their chips, and a few more joined. A Velox female who towered over Devon’s 1.8 meters stepped into the room and took the vacant chair next to the gray skinned Thrynn. For the second time that night, Devon laid eyes on a Velox who could pull off the formal wear look and not seem ridiculous about it. The Velox dealer had noticed as well and batted his antennae in her direction. She chirped something in the Velox tongue, and the dealer’s antennae shot straight up, a sign his interest was piqued. Whether it was in a positive or negative way, Devon didn’t know.

  “Targets secured,” Ela said again a few minutes later. “It’s on you, now.”

  That’s all Devon needed to hear. He waited as the players made their bets, then placed his hand on the table. “Ladies, gentle-sents, this has been a most enjoyable game, but I am afraid the stakes are too rich for my blood. I fold.”

  “Oh, such a shame, Mister—” The dealer studied him for a long moment, his multi-faceted eyes glimmering in the yellow lamplight. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t remember the name I gave you. Let me give you my real one.” Devon reached into his pants pocket and retrieved the second item: a small, silver badge. “Devon Harlow, Interstel PD. Mr. Rascon here is under arrest.”

  The whole table fell silent. Everyone stared at the police badge in his hand. The Thrynn named Rascon tried to make a run for it, but he hadn’t made two steps before the female Velox blocked his way. She held up a badge of her own. “Miranda H’Than. Don’t even try it.”

  “Damn!” Rascon spat. “I ssshould’ve known it was too good a deal!” He reached into his robes.

  Before Devon could yell “Gun!” and reach for his own sidearm, Miranda moved faster than the eye could follow. One moment Rascon was leveling his pistol at her, the next he was on the floor, pinned by three of her four arms. The remaining hand slapped a set of cuffs onto the Thrynn’s wrists.

  By this point, the other card players had jumped out of their seats. A few, including the dealer, made for the door, but the copper-headed android servant barred their way. He pulled the tip off the parasol and aimed a large-caliber barrel at the dealer. “Give me an excuse, criminal scum.”

  “Easy, Copperhead!” Devon placed himself between the dealer and his trigger-happy squad member. “I know you love the sight of blood—an unhealthy trait even for synthetics, I might add—but you’ve got to tone it down.”

  To the scared card players, Devon said, “You’re all free to go.”

  One of the players was an Elowan. Much of his blue-green body was hidden beneath a self-reflective suit designed to increase photosynthesis, even in fluorescent or LED light. He studied Devon and Miranda for a long moment before he asked, “Is it standard procedure to let criminals go?”

  “Are you insssane?” a Thrynn next to him hissed, his reptilian tongue putting extra emphasis on the “S” sound.

  “It’s a fair question,” the Elowan countered. “I want confirmation, so I’m not harassed about this later.”

  “An officer can overlook misdemeanor offenses when in pursuit of suspected felons.” Devon pointed at Miranda, who had her knee in the trussed-up card shark’s back. “I’d much rather send this sent-trafficker to prison than cite you for engaging in unregulated gambling. Chances are you were robbed enough, playing against a dealer like this cheat.”

  “Hey!” the dealer objected, his antennae humming.

  “Sorry, no offense.” Devon shrugged. “I just know how casinos operate.” To the Elowan he again said, “Interstel PD thanks you for your cooperation. Now, get out of here, please.”

  The Elowan shrugged and walked out the door, the Thrynn and the others following close behind. Miranda watched them go, then turned her multifaceted eyes on Devon. “Was that wise?” she asked as she hoisted Rascon to his feet.

  “We don’t have the manpower to arrest the whole casino.” He pointed out the window, at a commotion on the main floor. Several Interstel PD officers stood in a line, shock batons in hand. The patrons shied away from them, but most made no move to run. This wasn’t the first time the Backroom had been raided, and it also wasn’t the first time more mundane crimes were overlooked in the pursuit of darker ones. “It’ll be fine. This was a low-level private event. I doubt anyone in this room was on any kind of watchlist, save for our boy here.”

  Devon slapped Mr. Rascon on the back for emphasis. “You’re going away for a long time.” He made for the door. Come on, Miranda, Copperhead. Time to go get our ‘atta boys’ from the Lieutenant.”

  “You morons!” Lieutenant Stone pounded the sole bare spot on his faux wood desk, hard enough to shake the stacks of murder books and other paperwork that reached toward the room’s low ceiling. “How in the name of everything holy and unholy could you screw up so badly?”

  Devon stood in front of the massively overloaded desk, his four squad members behind him. Miranda rested her bulk on her hind legs, her two sets of arms crossed in front of her thorax and abdomen. Next to her, Officer Thassor waited, his green skin a lime color in the office’s stark lighting. He appeared as if he wanted to say something, but was minding his forked tongue for a change. Ela, the squad’s Elowan medical examiner and field medic, slouched with her hands in the pockets of her white coat. Her green eyes had a distant look to them, as if she were running any number of reports and cases through her head, which was likely the case.

  At the end of the line stood Copperhead, the squad’s android enforcer unit. His face wasn’t designed for movement, so he had commissioned a number of bronze-colored masks to wear depending on the situation: a smiling face for dealing with the general public or his fellow squad members, a scowl when in pursuit or interrogation of criminals, and one with an ecstatic grin that he reserved for the range and for particularly fierce shootouts. Today he wore a mask with a slight frown and quirked eyebrows that could reflect curiosity, confusion, or contrition. When Stone was involved, it was usually a combination of the three.

  Stone continued to rant for several minutes, his face growing redder by the second. When he finally paused to catch his breath, Devon asked, “What is this about, sir?”