The Legend Of The Blue Dasher (Awash In Starlight) (Pre-flight edition)

By Steve Merrick

When the infant Fenguang He Xingyun, a sole survivor was pulled alive from the rubble of a bomb blast he got that name, Crazy mans Luck. 8 years later and the Earth has only one commodity left, Its children, and the eight year old Xingyun is going to need more than luck to escape the trap of his home world, alive.

Lost in the midst of a war that nobody can win, the relief space ship the Blue Dasher returns to the Earth once more, this is her final journey, and in a battle for survival that spans the Solar System, a young boy must fight to keep his humanity and his own sanity. On a journey that has no definite outcome the boy must run...........

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Merrick
• Release date: Sep 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301576807

Steve Merrick

Why is it so hard to write your own Biography and why do words like pretentious and dilemma keep ricocheting around my head as I type this. So from the top, I am Steve Merrick, I am also known as stevesevilempire the photographer, check the website any time you want or type that into google, really I am a one man evil empire. My life long dream has been to write good science fiction, real stories that use the future in an allegorical way to reflect our present. Other than cycling and tree hugging my hobbies are Physics, Marine Biology, Ilford HP5 Film, music and my first love is photography. Steve Merrick AKA stevesevilmpire

Book preview

The Legend Of The Blue Dasher(Awash In Starlight)

(PRE FLIGHT EDITION 2)

Smashwords Edition

By

Steve Merrick

Copyright Steve Merrick 2013

Awash in starlight lurk an infinite number of stories. The Blue Dashers is just one of them. Sadly, it's a variation on a human theme, as her tale is only a replay of many such events that have occurred through your species brief history. Oppression it seems is a human obsession, as is opposing it, it comes quite naturally to humanity to oppose it. So here is her final voyage, during an ill fated civil war that erupted towards the end of the scrambled carnage for the last reserves on that drained planet that we called the Earth. You can still see her remains on the dark side of the moon, this magnificent Asterio B class ship lies smashed and broken, impacts from all manner of weapons scar her once majestic hull, making her little more than a time capsule of human folly. Even the rock that she is made from can be crumbled in your fingers, and she is now becoming a part of the Luna surface. Her crew still lie where they died on her decks, and the refugees that survived the gigantic crash were all executed via her airlocks. Their fragile skeletons reflect what little light there is and they are scattered around her huge form.

Yet once they were alive. Thats the trickery of time isn’t it. Once they were alive.

PART 1

Dragonflies and Massacres.

The boy lay quietly watching the world blur past him, he couldn't move anyway so he patiently looked at the chaos from the explosion. His eyes drank in the scene of irrelevant pain then focussed on the medic who tiredly went through the motions with the injured, marking a letter on their heads with their own blood, the boy waited his turn, still unable to hear, but was hoping the medic would put the letter S on his head, he liked that letter a lot. It was one of seven letters that he knew so far, and his favourite. Then the medic looked him over, talking to him, his mouth moved but no sound came out of it. He asked him for. A letter S please. The man smiled and drew on his forehead, which was an uplifting release for the boy, he tried to sit and felt the soldiers arms on his shoulders, then he saw his wristwatch smashed and blooded on the floor, he had promised to look after it and now it was crushed, as was his wrist. The spasm was as shocking as it was unexpected, and in that deaf silence the boy had his first seizure, his world warped surrealistically as his vision reddened with the spasms contracting his every muscle. The medic held him firmly as he stretched and contorted on this street, blood dried glue like in his clothes, and as the child's body attacked itself, his mind sought refuge from this loss of control or reason, as his eyes searched for relief he saw her flying low above him, and with that he had his last thought before the relief of unconsciousness. As she left her vapour trail and flew he thought. Spitfire.

Setting the gun cameras to live feed Flight Leader Mtumbo of the commonwealths last squadron flew through the chaos of the missile strike, dropping so low that the boy felt he could reach out to him, he fed the flight data back to the control officer and after another sweep he went back to his patrol, oblivious to the pain beneath him, not even shocked by the sight of it anymore, the emotionally exhausted pilot almost robotically went back to work.

Two and a half days later his footage was received by the Blue Dasher, the Captain of this massive Asterio B class space ship sat in her day room scanning the news, Jester looked at it blankly as the report carried on, and then watched the smoke and debris that was scattered on the street below, people moved like ants through this aerial perspective. The wiry blonde thought yet again of censoring the data stream, she knew that the refugees on board had seen much worse, survived similar incidents, yet she had a built in urge to protect her passengers. She looked at her figures for the run whilst the data and news continued relentlessly, life and death journalism hovered unnoticed in the back ground as Jester totted up the totals. Over seven and a half thousand refugees on this run, she was relieved they had the new longer range Hippo shuttles aboard, as the loading times had now been cut in half. Pausing she looked back to the news as it flowed onwards, New Marseille had finally fallen to the church. She looked absently at the numbers around her again, knowing that the people they were carrying had been plucked by chance, to her ship, from that same city.

Once every six month the Dasher reached that planet and every time it got worse. She was still appalled at the state that many of the them arrived in. It angered her space born mind that human beings could reach such a decrepit and often terrified condition. The noise changed from the holo units projected image. Looking up at first she thought it was a party. Then a young woman was led down through the crowd. The Churcher's began to throw things and spit at her, Jesters eyes were drawn catastrophically to the image, she thought of her daughter, chanting and laughing, the faithful threw missiles and screamed curses. As she like a lost distant lamb was pulled down a narrow corridor of people. Jester looked away, she didn't understand any of this any more, besides that all happened a day an half ago. Suddenly feeling very small she looked at the figures, that girl was dead. Tired and distressed at the idea of witch burning, she turned off the holo, and leaning back looked out to the distant stars.

At the edge of the solar system, is the Kuiper belt, stretching like an unfathomable sea of asteroids, it dances at great distances around the sun, her distant light falls sharply on to the lively tides of geology, as comets throw their energies away in massive displays of fire and ice. Here hangs Kuiper Station, built from three larger asteroids, hollowed out and fused together with ice, a portal between the solar system and the outer colonised worlds. Devised at the height of mankind’s second stone age, and still evolving after her brief three hundred and thirty years of service. Two million people live here, and this home of the Spacers, it is so distant that a signal from Earth takes six an a half days to reach them.

The elected leader Vinegar Sue, was regretting her ban on censorship when the reports arrived. She watched alongside everyone else as the rocks hit the side of her head, as the footage relentlessly played, the girl fell, the masked guard thrust his hands into her dark hair and pulled her to her feet. Blood smarted from her knees, as she was dragged towards the camera. Then seeing the pyre of wood ahead of her, she tried in a lost way to walk away. Whilst the crowd savagely pushed her forwards. Sue stiffened and turned away from the screen. When she let out a quiet Please. Sue looked up at the lost face. Looking around her she saw her peoples shared shock at this. Turning she held out her hand to a young man who wept nearby. Internally she wanted to strangle the bastards, but she knew this report was already done. That girl had died six and a half days ago.

Further from the solar system and many years away, are the colonies. Some large and some small. The precious life supporting planets were scattered like a lottery of dust throughout the cosmos. Here with infinite space and a lot of obstacles to overcome, the idea of war had become a historic oddity. The life's blood of all of these worlds were a tribe of people. People born in the stars on their massive inverted world asteroid ships, the Spacers. For over a thousand years since the first child had been born on one of the long journeys to these planets, they had grown, making ships and trading as they sloughed the routes between all these worlds, they had no single leader but some amongst them had earned the greatest of respect from their tribe. One of these was the Earth born scientist known as Zhi Wa Wa.

As a child he had run to the ships, escaped from the embroiled mists of hatred and necessity that had engulfed the people of Earth. Being a sharp street urchin he had stayed, learned and acquired his knowledge to apply it with imagination, and somehow through his problem solving he had earned the respect of his true tribe. The signals took 2 months to reach them, being repackaged from Kuiper and sent in bursts. As he watched the young woman being tied concussed to the metal pole, he dropped his holo unit. Dragging himself from the equations around him, he watched with his life lover Roosh as the flames licked at her legs, and then with his eyes tightly shut he heard her screams from the small speakers.

Quietly from ship to ship the signal crept, shocking all who watched it and finally after much thought Zhi Wa Wa asked for a vote. The captains on each ship sent it to their crew and one by one the spacers voted. Finally the results slowly reverberated back. The tribe would abandon Earth, their home world was lost, but there was a proviso, overwhelmingly voted for, they would rescue every child they could from that abstraction of hell that the Earth had become. Having seen the result Zhi Wa Wa returned to his work. Knowing that as he calmed himself in the quantum world, a fast signal was being relayed from ship to ship to Kuiper station.

Three months after she had seen the report Jester placed the Dasher into a near orbit with Kuiper Station, she had been informed that this was their last trip, it had choked her up that they were saying farewell to that distant home, yet in the holds a community had evolved as it always did. Free from the oppression the refugees had gone from shock to democracy, mimicking the way the spacers elected their skippers. Their representative was a tall man called Stockton, Chinese mixed with Ethiopian, and he towered over Jester whenever they met, but the physician had proven to be a good choice. So as she walked into the loading bay she could feel all 7362 of them looking to her, Kate Watanabe stood on her walking stick holding the black paintbrush, meanwhile Stockton held the white one as her main dogsbody can do man Singh stood holding the ladder.

NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN THOUSAND AND TWENTY TWO

Silently Singh mounted the ladder and started to smother black paint over the latter numbers. Then one by one he slowly added the newer numbers.

NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHTY FOUR

The refugees were unaware of the small crews shock at the finality of this mission, as they were unaware that the rest of the colonised world had put a stop to her humanitarian runs, Singh openly wept whilst some cheered yet Jester stared at that number coldly, she turned and said. Our hearts go out to those that remain. As she had twelve times before, then surprisingly the walking wounded of the UN and Commonwealth limped forward, one of the women supported her wounded colleague, many missed limbs but heartbreakingly they saluted that number on the walls of the landing bay. The Dashers two hundred and twenty first rescue mission was nearly over. That number was in lives saved, hearts beating as a result of her runs.

There were two holographic projectors that flickered the faces of many that were saved, Jester often cynically called it the slideshow of hope. It was a silence of relief for many but for Jester and her crew it was a depressing turning point, after this it would be delivery runs, she looked at the engineer Watanabe, she had been a refugee many runs back and had stayed on, she looked to Jester and smiled bitterly holding back her tears. This was her last run too.

THE DEMENTIAS OF DEMENTIAS PAST.

Later on their final approach Jester sat on the bridge, nostalgically remembering the first time she had seen the Dasher. As she revolved the veins of sky blue in her blurred with the darker purple of her main colour, blending together like a child's spinning top, making the ship seem alive, breathing fire from an engine burn, whilst she with her baggage sat in the shuttle watching it all over the shoulder of the pilot. She was named after a dragon fly, a bright blue and black dragon fly, and by a random fluke of geology she was by far the most beautiful Asterio ship around. Closing her eyes to remember the moment, she felt the breathlessness that she did on that day. Over time she had become Jesters home. Two marriages and two children had been born and lived through in this ship, and now she sat firmly in the Skippers chair.

Then the civil war had erupted, and the solar system had become a minefield of opposing parties. As a citizen of Kuiper she was officially neutral, as was her ship, but her crew were in some ways as divided as the solar system was. Yet they were neutral in this sea of alliances. They were the ferry men that took the refugees on their first steps to the colonies. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts she leant forwards and switched the screens to display the loading bays. A small boy was looking right into the camera, she smiled, then in a rare moment of relaxation she put her hat on and went to the bays.

Children had been getting rarer lately, people were unable to reproduce to the same levels they had in the old days, so she wanted to see the kid, for all that she knew he could be the very last Earth born child to exist. As she walked her mind was racing, they had been receiving reports from the power blocks that had held it together on the lost planet, even bubonic plague was taking hold there, but the fighting continued, resources were now paid for with blood. The Reserve Wars were still being fought when the uni faith church's influence had tipped the balance, hunting atheists and witches had become a planet wide hobby, the child was one of seven thousand they had picked up at Marseilles Free Port, the last free port in the whole European continent, gone now. It was the same story everywhere you went and there had even been a reported witch burning on Kuiper station.

Her ship had narrowly escaped from internment on this penultimate run. The Churches ships were much faster and more hellishly armed than they had anticipated, but they had only fired warning shots this time. The lift was accelerating as she thought of all these random facts, and she finally admitted to herself that she was relieved that they wouldn’t have to go back into that maelstrom of burning metals. She had surprised herself with that vocal objection to Kuiper stations orders on the bridge, but had felt that it was wrong to withdraw the only escape route from their home planet. The door ways opened and she walked briskly into the bays and watched a scene of seeming chaos unfolding in front of her.

Hoi Skipper's on the deck, somebody alert the media!

She stopped and smiled to the large grease monkey called Singh, the man was eternally faithful to his dead wife, yet his humour at times of crisis saved the day. Hoi wheres that kid that was poking the cameras then? Jester asked, he laughed and pointed at the small boy who was tied to the bulkhead by a strong rope. Oh right sunbeam, whats your game with the cameras, and you have been troublesome on the whole trip haven't you. She wasn't particularly good at being stern with anyone let alone a cute malnourished 7 year old. His lack of reaction was worrying too, as she recognised the symptoms of shock when she saw them. Where is your family. Then his deep and large eyes stared at her, she knew that his family was dead. Oh an orphan, well don't you worry, we have lots of lost kids just like you on Kuiper and people to look after you. Leaning down she started to untie him, and then after a lot of un-knotting she took his small hand in hers. Kneeling to his height she asked. Have you eaten and what is this?

Its Jack, it was my sisters. The tatty teddy bear had been well used over the years, Jester knew it was probably generations old, since nobody made them on the planet anymore. I did eat and Mr Singh was playing spacers and pirates with me, will he mind you untying me. Singh had stepped down and the little boys face lit up.

Now Skipper where are you taking my dinner, you know I likes eating the little ones. He tickled the boy who giggled out his objections. Turning Singh whispered to her Can we keep him skipper, you know we need a cabin boy aboard? It caught Jester by surprise, but if they were going to be getting out of the solar system then the Dasher was as safe a place as any for this child, knowing her crew as well as she did it would probably be the best possible outcome for an orphan, if he was an orphan. She picked him up and placed him in Singh's arms.

Oh hell I don't know do I but for now he is your problem.

Jester stepped away and watched as the two of them played and worked together, yes another kid on the ship would be welcome, and he would keep them all on their toes. Turning she pushed through the crowd of refugees as they queued in front of Kuipers Immigration control officers. One old woman even held a scruffy little dog. They had all been plucked from certain death in Marseille and even here now, they were still very insecure about their futures. So she pushed gently through the crowd until one man stood in front of her, holding a short woman in his arms, tears rolled gently down the young mans face and the girl was in a similar state. Captain we can never thank you enough or even express how we feel about you. My wife is pregnant and boy or girl we will call it Jester. She had become used to these scenes as people realised they had made it, escaped from the planet and survived, it wasn't shock but Jess felt it was a very similar psychological mechanism. So she placed both hands on their shoulders and smiled, then went through the immigration line to see the controller.

This was the hardest part of the journey in some ways, as the controller was responsible for feeding and relocating these poor buggers, his task wasn't easy as it hinged on their qualifications and capabilities. He was talking to another one of her engineers, Kate Watanabe, Kate had escaped from Tokyo ten years ago aboard the dasher and now she felt that all the refugees were her own personal responsibility, in fact most of her crew were refugees who had been through this whole process, Watanabe had been the last skippers choice, she had been pulled aboard with a massive and traumatic gunshot injury to her hip. Yet even though she was to spend the rest of her life with a walking stick, she was one of the most talented engineers Jess had ever met, her old Skipper had spotted that and taken her aboard. The controller pulled himself away and waved Jess over.

You have a meeting later today, an important one. He always spoke sparingly, his job had evolved via every known human language and it had effected his speech patterns appropriately. He had to speak slowly and clearly because most of his clients didn’t speak Kuip pigeon yet. When I say important I mean more important than Vinegar Sue. This caught Jester's attention, Vinegar Sue was the elected leader of the Kuiper council, and for an ex miner she was the most important person in all of the colonial states. Even the spacers head honcho Zhi Wa Wa had less power, and that guy somehow controlled all of the routes to the seven distinct colonies, known collectively as the outer worlds. You will have to go to Kuiper Station and this time do not forget your comm unit!' This gave her a start, Jess had only been a skipper for a little over three years, her expression must have given her confusion away because the controller had a rare empathetic moment and almost smiled. Relax I can let you know you have passed probation, this is a biggie that's going to fall into your lap. He paused, thinking, Jess could actually see him thinking, then with a frown he added. It's so big that I don't even know why you have been summoned."

Jester looked again at the number written on the landing bays inner hatches. The number changed with every return trip from Earth, yet here and now over her thirty year working life the Blue Dasher had saved that many people, Singh was sat next to Watanabe. If this was their last journey into the solar system for a while then suddenly the little ship board tradition took on a different meaning. It was saddening to realise that this number would not increase in the foreseeable future. Jumping into shuttle three and nodding to the pilot Charlie. The large Papuan smiled back and then yelled. Everyone Strap in, take off in five. Charlie had been born on the Dash, his mother had died in child birth, not because of any other reason than malnutrition, so the 23 year old had lived his entire life aboard her, he was also a dream pilot, although like many space born humans his skill base was much wider because of necessity, although it was no secret that he loved being in the cockpit.

Sitting back in the net of her web like seat, she thought of the history, lost in a rare moment of lethargy her mind searched for the patterns that had led to this day. Three hundred and fifty odd years back, the Spacers had returned from the colonies, unable to fathom the silence from their home world. A small A class Asterio had entered the solar system under the command of a woman called Calypso, her ship the Orpheus had received no hails as they approached the Kuiper station. Jester smiled at the thought of the station back then, one asteroid and a few miners. Calypso had entered a nightmarish joke, as she had met the mining coordinator, disbelieving what she heard, the Captain couldn't understand the logic of the wars any more than Jester 350 years later could.

Realising that the planet wide war for