Mascot: Starways

By Alexis Glynn Latner

Daya Tattujayan is the manager of a remote and nearly derelict space mining station. She has plenty of problems to deal with even before the interstellar syndicate that owns the station sends an auditor to check up on her work.

Rik Gole is a nomadic interstellar auditor with no roots to tie him down. He is ruthless when he has to be and very good at what he does, but Rik would be the first to admit that a woman like Daya and a place like this station are way outside of his previous experience.

Before Daya and Rik can decide whether they are antagonists, allies, or something more, an unexpected enemy attacks the station. To save their lives, they must dare to trust each other. And they need help from a very unconventional defender—Daya's mysterious alien pet, the mascot of Star Corner Station.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Avendis Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781942686095

Book preview

1

Starships always shone when they reached their destination. When they emerged out of the strange non-space of starflight, returning into real space and time, starships shed light. The shining wasn’t usually apparent to passengers, even though it might be visible to watchers in the nearest space station. In his career to date, Rik Gole had ended a couple of hundred starflight journeys without seeing anything of the sort.

This time was different. Reaching this out-of-the-way destination took a high-energy starjump. The energy of the starjump made the star-freighter shine like a beacon when it got here. Shining on Star Corner Station, the light of Rik’s arrival accentuated how ugly it was.

The Station was a cobbled-together hulk, battered by asteroid impacts and crudely repaired. Windows in deeply shadowed crevasses of the station showed as bright pinpoints, but the pinpoints were scattered, even furtive, suggesting that large sections of the station were deserted or decommissioned. The Station’s hull told which way the local cosmic wind was blowing—from above. That way lay a massive, brilliant blue star embedded in the Starcross Nebula. The radiance of the star drove a violent wind of gas and dust across the Station, the top side of which was conspicuously weathered—stained and pitted.

Behind the Station, a shiny, barren orb hung in front of the nebular backdrop of pink and blue gas and dark dust. That was the metal planetary core that Star Corner Station orbited, and the last remaining reason the Station existed. Whether it was a good enough reason was a question Rik meant to answer.

Rik was an interstellar auditor.

Unlike some auditors for the Faxen Interstellar Financial Authority, FINFINA, Rik took no joy in the exposé of an unprofitable enterprise, one that had outlived its time, but nonetheless employed a number of people and played some kind of role in an orbital community. Or helped a remote world communicate with the rest of the universe. Or housed a terraforming operation. Something like that. If Star Corner Station had any such redeeming features, that was not obvious. But Rik was here not just to shine an investigative light at the surface of it; he was here to illuminate its inner workings.

That he had been sent to Star Corner Station meant that FINFINA had reason to suspect misadministration or dishonesty. He was here to find out exactly what was wrong and who was responsible.

Rik’s star-freighter drifted into the massive cradle of a dock. Meanwhile Rik reviewed his assignment, using his electronic notebook. The manager of Star Corner Station was one Davend Tattujayan, a person whose gender was indeterminate from the name crammed into a constricted box in the audit template. The manager was identified as Goyan. That came as no surprise. Goya was a long-colonized planet with hereditary spacegoing guilds.

At a bored wave from a crewwoman in a uniform coverall, Rik exited the star-freighter. He was the only passenger, the rest of what the freighter had carried being cargo destined for the Station. He had a copy of the manifest and had personally inspected the cargo, consisting of analytic instruments, machine replacement parts, food supplies, and personal packages for Station crew. The star-freighter would proceed to take on cargo in the form of purified ores. That was almost all that the Station contributed to the rest of the universe these days. Fine, if it was enough. And well enough accounted for.

Somebody from the Station’s management should have met him at the dock. That no one did made him wonder if his reception had been delayed to give someone time to hide something. He glanced around. His expert eye could assess any space place for locations in which to hide contraband. Just here in the station dock, he saw a few interestingly nondescript convex surfaces, plus a hatch not located anywhere that made structural sense, but in a suggestive proximity to some side-loading machinery. As to the rest of the station—the looming, crevassed, partly deserted, much-damaged and patched bulk of it. . . . Good gods, Rik thought. You could hide entire starships in this place.

His investigative instincts stirred.

A young man rushed into the dock. Auditor Gole? I’m Mattiz-Kol Sarpov, Station Manager Tattujayan’s secretary. The secretary’s lank brown hair stuck out—a predictable consequence of spingravity and the reason Rik kept his own hair short. The name and the accent identified the secretary as a being from Faxe, the principal planet of the Faxen Union, as was Rik himself. Good. Absent cultural differences, a callow secretary could be an open book to Rik. The Manager will be delayed for some time, so I’ll show you to⁠—

Rik interrupted. The audit protocol is that I meet with the Manager immediately upon my arrival.

The secretary gave Rik an odd look, waved for Rik to come with him, and set off at a run.

Davendaya Tattujayan had known something like this could happen and dreaded the day it did. She just hadn’t known exactly where it would be—in what storage bin or locker, undercompartment, sealed tank, service chase, or locked gallery in the Station. It had turned out to be here: below the old military materials depot. The depot was obsolete, closed, locked, and highly restricted. She had a master key in the event of an emergency. She had declared an emergency when the floor of the depot sagged into the corridor under it, dropping a huge mass of corrosive red—stuff.

The stuff was still falling in thick red clots. The leading edge of the mass was creeping toward the living quarters for Station personnel in this sector. Those personnel were being evacuated, shift sleepers roused out of their bunks with shouts and shoulders shaken.

Ops Chief Jax Trover scrambled down the nearest ladder. He handed her back the master key and reported, "There’s a row of huge containers placarded ‘do not drop,’ ‘do not strike with sharp instruments,’ ‘do not expose to water’ and ‘do not eject into space.’ Some of the containers are bulging, they are! The one on the end fell out of the rack and split open. Only half of what was in it