Meteor Mags: The Battle of Vesta 4 and Other Tales

By Matthew Howard

Four Action-Packed Stories Full of Anarchy, Asteroids, and Excessive Ammunition Continue The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches! Hoist the Jolly Roger and Get Ready to Rock!

Rings of Ceres: A hell-raising space pirate and her indestructible calico cat return to a decimated asteroid civilization to rescue friends and kick ass, but they get caught up in violent riots between the desperate citizens of Ceres and the mercenary security forces guarding the mining corporations.

Jam Room: Meteor Mags leads a jam session with the teenagers who want to start a punk band called Dumpster Kittens!

The Battle of Vesta 4: Meteor Mags and her fun-loving crew throw the birthday party of a lifetime—until death rains down from the sky! Mosh at the rock’n’roll party of the century as the Psycho 78s record their new album! Flee in terror as Club Assteroid falls under the dragons’ assault from space! Discover the underground caverns of Vesta and join the resistance! Take one last hell ride aboard the Queen Anne before it all goes up in flame! Strap on your battle armor and get ready for the most brutal, barbaric, blood-soaked fight of your life: the Battle of Vesta 4!

Hunted to Extinction: Meteor Mags and Patches undertake one last hunt to exterminate the space lizards from our solar system. Their journey reveals the fate of Tarzi’s parents, a tragedy that connects our criminal crew to a powerful potential ally. Plus, Mags gets a new ship, and it’s got even more kick-ass stolen technology to help her plunder the System! Her club might have been destroyed, but Meteor Mags and her friends will never accept defeat so long as they live.

May not be suitable for children or carbon-based life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Howard
• Release date: Oct 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463656730

Matthew Howard

Matthew is a mammalian vertebrate who occupies spacetime, where he possesses mass and generates electromagnetic fields. He absorbs and reflects photons, and is currently recycling his own body weight in adenosine triphosphate every day.

Book preview

The Battle of Vesta 4

METEOR MAGS

THE BATTLE OF VESTA 4

And Other Tales

Produced by

Matthew Howard

In Conjunction with

Margareta’s Alliance for Gravitational Studies

puma concolor aeternus press

2018

Meteor Mags: The Battle of Vesta 4 and Other Tales.

© 2018 Matthew Howard. All Rights Reserved.

Volume 8 of The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches.

Rings of Ceres was previously published as Volume 7.

MeteorMags.com

CONTENTS

Our Story So Far

16. Rings of Ceres

Part One: The Massacre

Part Two: The Tunnel

Epilogue: The Mural

Anarchopedia: Universal Standard Time

Dumpster Kittens: Suicide Mission to Ceres

Dumpster Kittens: Teenage Killer from Vesta

Dumpster Kittens: Apology

Amplifier

17. Jam Room

Dumpster Kittens: Agents of Cruelty

Asteroid Underground Interview: Alonso

Sterile Skins: Surgical Solution

18. The Battle of Vesta 4

Part One: World War Whatever

Part Two: The Party

Part Three: The Slaughter

Part Four: The Queen Anne’s Revenge

19. Hunted to Extinction

Part One: Queen of the Red Coast

Part Two: Monsters of the Deep

Part Three: The Ghost Ship

More Books by This Author

OUR STORY SO FAR

Once upon a time in 2029… The short stories in The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches are episodic, and each one builds on previous stories. For a complete introduction to the space pirate Meteor Mags and her band of rock’n’roll rebels, get the Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition.

Voyage of the Calico Tigress described how rings formed around Ceres after the tornado in Blind Alley Blues destroyed the Ceresian water-processing facilities. The storm shot the water into space to freeze in rings, along with industrial wreckage and human carnage.

As with many asteroids in the Belt, Ceres has artificial gravity and atmosphere. The principles of gravity control were first theorized by Mags in 1965 and developed in research at her grandmother’s communal micro-society. Mags has a long-standing feud with GravCorp, who stole the work and technology, and later became one of the largest interplanetary corporations.

Mags’ constant companion, a calico cat named Patches, has experienced transformative events in 2029. First, she was altered by an ancient and mysterious machine that harnessed the energy of a giant moon to make her invincible. Then, she and Mags had their minds merged with a telepathic space octopus. Though entirely feline, Patches gained a new perspective; and Mags in many ways became even more feline than before. Mags, who was born with a tail and other cat-like qualities, has carried a chip on her shoulder about humans ever since the mindmeld, though she descends from a long line of purely human women who changed the course of history more than once—or died trying.

Mags and her oldest friend Celina run a club on the asteroid Vesta, and its residents now include a group of girls Mags rescued in September. Kaufman, the former Chief Administrator of the Port Authority on Mars, recently abandoned his post and brought his son Anton to join Mags’ band of outlaws. The Port Authority is rife with spies from various factions with conflicting agendas.

Meteor Mags and her musical comrades have long opposed the paramilitary squads of the Musical Freedoms Act of 2019 (MFA). That conflict recently escalated with the passage of an amendment specifically outlawing Mags, her music, and any depictions of her. The amendment authorized all citizens of the solar system to terminate her.

Mags’ long-time partner Slim, the son of a twentieth-century crime lord in San Francisco’s Chinatown, has been working with her to design a system of free energy based on lost designs from Nikola Tesla. Mags dreams of using free energy to smash the economic stranglehold Earth’s mining corporations have on the asteroid belt.

Mags recently gathered an odd assortment of friends on a mysterious asteroid: a swarm of telepathic octopuses descended from a genetic experiment to create living weapons; a tribe of the descendants of lost Soviet space monkeys; and her old friend Alonso, a multi-talented musician whose tours involved her in the early 2000s before the passage of the MFA drove him and his bandmates underground.

Jeremy and Tinta first appeared in Whipping Boy, and Tinta made a cameo appearance in Blind Alley Blues. Jeremy worships Meteor Mags and her band, the Psycho 78s. He met Mags in early 2029 when she executed his boss for ratting out her favorite pirate radio station to the MFA. He subsequently met Tinta when he went to her tattoo shop to complete the star tattoos he had started in tribute to Mags.

Mags recently wrecked her personal spaceship in a poorly thought-out landing maneuver fueled by sleep deprivation. It’s been in the shop ever since she flew it home completely wasted. Her friend and club DJ Dr. Plutonian let her borrow his vessel for a couple days.

16

Rings of Ceres

You attack a baby, she cries.

You attack a puppy, she cowers.

You attack a kittycat, she fights.

—George Carlin; Carlin at Carnegie, 1982.

Part One: The Massacre

November 2029: Svoboda 9.

Patches held the gecko firmly under her forepaw, preventing his escape without squeezing the life from him. It seemed only right that all things smaller than she should die. But his struggles caught her attention. Detachedly observing him, she took a moment to consider his perspective.

Her telepathic merger with Meteor Mags and the mother octopus in September gave the murderous calico the points of view of two additional lifeforms, neither of which was her species. Events of November propelled life forward at a breakneck pace for her pirate crew, but the fearless feline had found ample pause to consider mortality and her place in the universe.

Was the lizard so different, she wondered. He or his recent ancestors were born on Earth, like her, and transported to the populated regions of the Belt on merchant ships. He, too, found himself farther from the sun than any of his kind. Like her, he wanted so dearly to live. To eat. To run free.

The gecko detached his tail, but the wriggling scrap of meat failed to distract his captor. He changed colors to match the floor’s metal surface in the Hyades’ cargo hold. It granted him no reprieve. In vain, his skin cells sought to mimic the tri-colored coat of the paw pinning him down. Out of options, he ceased struggling and pretended to die.

His heartbeat made a liar of him. Patches felt his life pulsing through her paw pads. She lifted her paw slightly, but his squirming excited her. She pressed him back down, and her invincible claws sank into the deck around him like a cage. His limbs stuck out between the bars.

Then Patches did something she had never done with her prey. She let him go.

He scampered across the deck as fast as he could, ran straight up the wall, and sat huffing nervously at the top. His tiny tongue flicked as quickly as a hummingbird’s. Like a bolt of lightning, he shot across the wall into an impossibly narrow crevice and disappeared.

Patches licked the gecko’s scent from her paw and casually rolled back on her haunches. As for the several hundreds of dragons and humans she had helped Mags terminate since 2027, she felt no remorse. If anything, she felt proud to have ended their lives, not as evidence of her skill as a huntress, but because they had clearly been her enemies.

For the minuscule reptile she had just released, she felt something else entirely: empathy. For a moment, she felt an animalistic kinship, as if he was her cub—something more than a source of food and entertainment.

Her ears flicked back and forth. Whether she heard Mags’ voice or was only aware her best friend needed her right away, she could not say. She shot from the cargo hold like a fur-covered rocket onto the surface of the asteroid.

You can’t be serious, said Mags. An aquarium?

"Hell yes, tía. Check this out." Alonso stood with her before a drafting table. He had set it up by a side entrance to the massive freighter they stole nearly three Earth days ago and relocated to the newly named Svoboda 9. After piloting the ship to the asteroid, Alonso elected to stay with Mags’ new friends: a swarm of telepathic octopuses and an intelligent tribe of macaques descended from lost Soviet space monkeys.

In no time at all, Alonso picked up his guitar and started jamming with this unlikely menagerie through a mental link the octopuses created. But while the interior caverns now looked like a band’s practice space, with posters and empty bottles and cables running in every direction, the area around the Hyades had become a construction site.

Sawhorses, toolboxes, and tables covered with power tools from the Hyades’ maintenance crew proved Alonso’s determination to create. Piles of equipment and supplies lay all about, carried from the Hyades by the monkeys—or, as he liked to call them, the Svobodans, though he included himself and the cephalopods in that.

With a wave of Alonso’s hand, the drafting table lit up and hummed. It projected a three-dimensional model of the Hyades in luminous green outlines floating above the table. With a blue penlight, Alonso highlighted sections of the ship as he discussed them, rotating the model for a better view.

Mags asked, Where did you get all this stuff?

"Port Authority’s got everything. Now look. We take the Hyades rec room. It’s huge. We wall it off with Plexi, with a backup layer in case the barrier breaks, and an auxiliary water supply. The unused living quarters can easily be gutted to hold an expanded tank. Then all we need to do is—"

You are a bloody madman. Mags puffed on a stolen cigarette. Then what? Take my baby octos on a musical tour of the solar system?

Alonso turned his palms upward. Of course! With the monkeys to crew the ship—

Mags’ laugh cut him short. You want to take the little Stalinists with you?

Why you gotta hate on the monkeys, yo? They’re solid peeps.

The smuggler let out a sigh that could have filled the sails of a frigate.

"They fuckin’ love you, tía. I see it in their minds when the octos bond us. You’re like a goddess to them. A red-haired goddess of the conquering motherland, you know what I’m sayin’? With sweet-ass tatts, and a totally fine rack, an’ a ass as big as a—"

"Okay, Lonso. She sharply waved her hand. I got it. Her obsidian irises moved over his face like mysterious moons in orbit. I have one question for you."

He patted his chest. Bring it.

"If you’re so stoked about making a band out of my octos and astro-chimps, why haven’t you invited me on the tour?"

His smile glowed brighter than the model. You’d really come with us?

Mags flicked her ash onto the Svobodan wasteland. "Do you think I’d let you out of my sight with my babies? You’re crazier than I thought, ese! He raised his fist, and she bumped it. Now, she said, returning to the model, Patches and I need to make a few changes. She plucked the blue penlight from his hand. Number one, we need a playhouse—here. With scratching posts, and a basket of pillows. Plus, a luxury bathroom with multiple shower heads and a jacuzzi, right here. I need a gun safe, and it’ll take a big chunk out of your rec room plans. Then over here…"

Alonso took notes. He enjoyed watching his old friend take over as manager, just like she had on the Sterile Skins’ first two West Coast tours in the days before the Musical Freedoms Act. Auntie Mags, as he had known for years, might have been crazier than a shithouse rat, but he definitely wanted her on his side in a fight.

Touring the solar system would take one hell of a fight.

I know what you’re thinking, said Mags. "What about weapons? We retrofit the Hyades with these guns I got in the job on—god-fucking-damn-it! What now?!"

Mags pulled a black box the size of a postage stamp from a pocket in her bra and scowled. At the touch of her thumbprint, the device played a message. Her frustration turned to concern.

KZZZT no fucking idea what it was but the shop KZZZTotally destroyed. —eople lying dead in the streets, and the cities are KZZZT you get this, Mags, we could really KZZZT your help. KZZZTeet at the —ike we used to. —ove you.

Alonso asked, Who is that?

Tinta, said Mags. She’s on Ceres. The pirate covered her face with one hand. Curse me for a fucking papist. With everything that’s hit the fan, I forgot about poor Tinta.

What did she say about eating at the what?

"Meeting. Like we used to. Where’s Patches? No sooner had the words left her lips than the cat was at her feet, rubbing against her leather boots and leaving strands of indestructible hair like calling cards. Mags scooped her up. Are you in the mood for adventure?"

Alonso pursed his lips in disbelief and scratched his temple. "Every federale in the System is on your ass! And you want to fly back to a disaster the size of a planet?!"

"Dwarf planet, Mags corrected him. And the pigs can kiss my lily-white arse. My friends need me."

Word, said Alonso. "You need backup, tía? You know I got you."

You always did, the smuggler assured him. But we’ll be fine. Patches mewed in agreement. Mags rubbed one calico ear between her thumb and forefinger. Ceres is in total chaos right now. That’s where Patches and I do our best work.

You see any of those MFA scumbags, put a bullet in their brains for me. A’ight?

I’ll aim for vital organs instead. They don’t have a functioning brain cell in the lot of them. She kissed Alonso on the cheek, pausing so Patches could nuzzle his face before they headed back to Plutonian’s ship.

Mags powered up the vessel as Patches perched on the console to enjoy the view. Just between you and me, dear, we probably should have taken him up on that offer. She took out her little black box again, pressed her thumbprint to it, and said, Reply. Tinta, I’m on my way. She slipped it back into her bra. Now. Let’s go see what trouble we can get into.

Patches purred like a thunderstorm rumbling on a desert horizon. The ship they had borrowed carried the felons away from Svoboda and toward the asteroid whose destruction they had both so recently witnessed—and barely survived.

"This shit is beyond fucked up, said Mags. Can you believe this? She aimed a fingertip at the remains of industry and civilization. That was a water-processing plant. Shit will be jumping off here right quick if they run out of water and clean air."

She steered through the disgruntled Ceresian atmosphere. Mags thanked the goddess of pirates the vessel had not been described in recent warrants and amendments against her. To the swarm of disaster-relief crews from Earth and various mining colonies, the ship was just another ship. They had enough to worry about on the ground.

But not all the organized activity was benevolent.

Fifty meters below, a crowd pressed against a gate in the center of a fence enclosing private property. Inside the enclosure sat a ship and supply depots. The property belonged to a mining corporation, and the buildings upon it remained standing, hardly damaged.

They owed their survival to the collapse of a factory next door. Its massive pile of twisted debris formed a shelter from the wind and heavy objects the cyclone had picked up and turned into deadly missiles.

CeresIronCorp staffed the facility with a private security force. Corporations liked pleasant phrases such as private security. Accountants cheerfully entered them in ledgers as independent contractor expenses. But the contractors were far from cheerful or pleasant.

A more disparate group of killers-for-hire could hardly be found anywhere in the Belt. Three things gave them a cohesive group identity: the standard-issue .45 caliber pistols on their hips, in addition to whatever weapons they personally preferred; the blue-black uniforms, each decorated with a patch bearing the white-on-blue CIC logo of CeresIronCorp; and their eyes as cold and firm as day-old corpses.

Veterans of a thousand wars, they rarely served as enlisted soldiers. They earned their livings from the blood of conflicts which had nothing to do with them, serving whichever master paid the most.

More than one hundred mercs controlled access to the CIC facility, including its medical supplies, food, water, and transportation. But the crowd of Ceresian laborers and their families called that control into question.

Some say society is only three Earth days without food from a total revolt. Many people from the destroyed settlements had already gone without food and clean water for two.

Hundreds of injured, starving, and now-homeless citizens stormed the gate, trying to batter it to the ground and climb over. Mags picked up their shouting on the ship’s microphones. It filled the cabin with riotous tumult—until gunfire drowned it out. The mercs had opened fire on the crowd.

Mags arrived in time to see the massacre begin. Though her plan involved moving quietly without drawing attention to herself, anger took her to a different destiny. She cursed with an intensity that invented several phrases the English language had never known. Instead of passing over the melee, she spun the wheel and forced the ship to make an abrupt about-face.

Plutonian’s vessel was hardly armed at all compared to Mags’ Queen Anne, but she had wheeled aboard a gun safe and made a few modifications before leaving Vesta—just in case. At her command, the ship hovered over the mercenaries, but far enough to the side that Mags could aim a weapon into their midst.

While the Queen Anne had a door that lowered like a ramp for wheeling stolen goods aboard, Plutonian’s side door went upwards into a slot in the hull. The result was an open section like the side of a combat helicopter.

Mags popped in a pair of ear plugs and raised the door to reveal an M2 Browning machine gun whose tripod she had bolted to the deck. Her notorious sharpshooting skills were not needed to deal with the security goons below. Grouped in a