Bad Space: Delinquents

By Timothy J. Meyer

Underglow is one of the galaxy's worst ghettos. Slumlords squeeze the impoverished for all they're worth. Murder is common, cheap and no more than ambient noise to most. One wrong step off a catwalk can send someone plummeting ten thousand feet to the moon's surface. What a terrible place for children.

Delinquents is a spacepunk misadventure about preteen criminals, junkyard hideouts and a robbery gone sideways. Set in the Bad Space universe, Delinquents is nonetheless a stand-alone work and counted as Volume Four in the Year of the Horse Anthology, a collection of monthly short stories by Timothy J. Meyer, released in 2014.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timothy J. Meyer
• Release date: May 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310107955

Timothy J. Meyer

TIMOTHY J. MEYER is wanted on five counts of piracy, two counts of brigandage and one count of enthusiastic corruption of the galactic good. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact the local branch of the IMIS (Imperial Ministry of Interstellar Security).

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BAD SPACE:

DELINQUENTS

An April Short Story

by

Timothy J. Meyer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Timothy J. Meyer

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Delinquents is a stand-alone story set within the Bad Space universe. It references characters and situations that appear in the Bad Space Trilogy. Foreknowledge of this setting, however, is only meant to enhance the reading and is not required. For more information about Bad Space, visit www.badspacebooks.com.

The only acknowledged entrance to Battleship Awesome was to unlatch the emergency exit on the Undermetro Purple Line and throw yourself out the moving driftbus at the exact moment it crossed Saqiroy Street.

Sometimes, for giggles, Flask would frighten the other passengers by shouting Goodbye, cruel world! or something else suitably suicidal before leaping to his certain death. All the driftbus drivers on this route, a rotating roster of unamused veterans, were years past the shocked or even the scolding stages. By now, they each considered the sight of young boys abandoning ship over Saqiroy to be an essential part of a complete, balanced workday.

On one occasion, though, Flask did crucially mistime the actual jump by about three of the passing retroreflectors. Only a quick catch of the emergency handlebar saved him from a most ironic suicide. In his defense, he did get to ride the flapping emergency door all the way to his proper jumping point, which was pretty scary and cool.

Probably every other time you botched the timing on that jump, though, you either fell forever or landed in a river of molten garbage.

From emergency exit to junkyard below, it's a thirty foot free fall, a height that could easily kill someone even not heedless or seven years old. Assuming all three retroreflectors were waited for, though, assuming the timing of this particular jump was perfect, the landing pad was always eager to catch Flask.

The landing pad was nothing but a heap of ratty mattresses, the softest thing any of them could find or imagine. The second Flask lands, it expelled its great geyser of trapped dust into