Dirigibles at L5

By M.E. Owen

A mysterious distress signal sends Zion Station police chief Pilar Jones y Garcia, along with the crew of the Far Trails and a downsized copy of Zion's rogue AI Max, four billion kilometers away to the system's ship graveyard.

 

The signal originates from the Suyash, a state-of-the-art gas mining ship that mysteriously disappeared four years ago, presumed lost with all hands in Galtus's tumultuous atmosphere. And now just as mysteriously reappeared in the graveyard.

 

What Jones, Max, Skip and the others discover while investigating the Suyash will confront them with an even bigger conundrum.

 

Dirigibles at L5, fourth in M.E. Owen's Zion Station series, finds Jones and her friends presented with a history-changing opportunity—but only if they handle it exactly right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.E. Owen
• Release date: May 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201480455

Book preview

Dirigibles at L5

DIRIGIBLES AT L5

ZION STATION 04

M.E. OWEN

TOWHEE PUBLISHING

DIRIGIBLES AT L5

A ZION STATION STORY

Fifteen months after the Purge

1.

I should have been asleep when the call came. Racked out on my bunk in my stateroom, the nice big one I’d absconded when most of Zion Station’s scientists had been recalled, the door locked and coded to Do Not Disturb, I Will Airlock Your Ass.

Instead, I was sitting at my tiny desk with my throbbing head in my hands, too tired to even take off my boots.

We hadn’t discovered that the friendly competition between two of the system’s biggest gas mining ships had escalated into outright hostility until the bosun of the Galtus Glory had cold-cocked his counterpart from the Ignatius. The ensuing brawl—fine, let’s call it a riot—between the two inebriated shore-leaving crews had spilled into Zion’s main entertainment causeway, dragging in crews from other ships and leaving destruction and mayhem in its wake.

It had taken our entire police force—meaning me and my three deputies—only an hour to subdue the rioters, but the rest of the night and into the early morning to deal with the fallout. Injuries, damage, statements, more statements. Followed by processing the offenders, followed by sending the worst into the brig and the rest back to their ships under house arrest.

I was working up the energy to stand, take the two steps to my bunk, and just flop down boots and all when my comm buzzed.

And of course I made the mistake of glancing at it.

Goddammit, Jim, I snarled.

Always nice to hear your dulcet voice, Jones, Stationmaster Jim Tilton replied. How’s your head?

I resisted the urge to feel the side of my head. Still attached, I replied. I think.

One of the Ignatians had clocked me from behind as I was cuffing his mate. Not a hard punch, more of a shove, but my deputy Reena had promptly clobbered him, and he’d had the audacity to fall into me. Since he outmassed me by a factor of three, we both went down and my head had clipped the corner of a nearby pool table. Not my most shining moment as Police Chief.

I’d scrambled to my feet and explained with a couple whacks of my baton that you don’t hit women (unless they’re bigger than you, meaner than you, and hit you first), you don’t hit cops (bad idea, you dumbass), and you sure as hell don’t hit this particular woman cop. He’d gotten the message.

We have a request from Orbital Routing, Jim said now.

I don’t care, I said. I placed my hands on top of the desk and pushed myself to a mostly standing position.

They picked up an anomaly from the graveyard.

So? I took the two steps to the bunk and sat on its edge.

They’re asking that Zion Police investigate.

Out of my jurisdiction.

Zion Station orbited the gas giant Galtus, and mostly served the gigantic ships that mined methane and helium-3 from its atmosphere. Gas mining was a dangerous business, and hard on ships. The system’s ship graveyard was located at the stable L5 Lagrange point, in the same orbit as Galtus, but four billion kilometers behind us.

Way, way out of my jurisdiction.

I began to lean down, then thought the better of it and instead raised my left heel to the edge of the bunk. I began untying my boot.

"Anyway, it’s probably some asshole outfit hazing their rookies by making them run