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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 12: Cooper 76
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 254
Opening the hatch, he saw his laptop lying open on a metal fold-down table next to a very solid mass of metal in the midst of the oblong room. The metal mass served as a shield as a blue skinned manling dove at him with two daggers held overhead, and two more daggers held underneath. This was his first four-armed opponent, and he wondered for a second what Red Swashbuckler would say about fighting in zero G against a four-armed dagger fighter.
You have range. Arm length, body length, and sword length. Use it, he imagined the Commie supervillain/trainer saying with frosty irritation. Now move, you capitalist roader!
Cooper leapt up, flipped, hit the ceiling, and dove back hard. His sword stabbed into the surprised enemy who raised a dagger to block but could not overcome Cooper’s momentum. Cooper crashed into the alien using him as a cushion on the floor. This floated him up slowly, and he turned to see a pale albino who was holding his hands out far away from the sword on his waist.
“I’m going to take my device. And my other devices,” he said quietly and as gently as he could considering he had just killed a murderous pirate.
“Yes, sure, sir. Can you take me with you?”
Cooper kept moving, sword on guard, gathering up his computer, backpack, and other gear, and replied.
“Aren’t you a pirate?”
“Not really. I was kidnapped from Selene City, as they needed an ironman, and I had foolishly been boasting in the bars that I had gotten my certification. I wake up on a pirate ship, and they try to get me to pirate, but I refuse. I was sure they’d kill me, but as long as I keep their iron pile ticking over, they let me live.”
“I’m Brian Barrelmaster. Come with me.” Brian gathered up the last of his stuff, and slung it on his back. “What’s your name, young man?”
“Angle. My family is one of the greater Mathematics clans on Luna, and we get math names until we learn enough to learn something new about math which then becomes our second name. So I’m Angle of the Sea of Serenity Mathers Clan. Oh dear me, my family probably thinks I’m dead.”
Since Angle had not drawn the sword at his waist when his back was turned, Brian thought the story might be on the level. He thought to check it with his Sword, but considering what had happened last time he had used heavenly fire, he was not sure he wanted to find out what Detecting a Lie, which caused fire to flame up at a lie, would do.
“Why do you have a sword, Angle?”
“Oh, this, it's a joke.” He pulled out the sword. It was broken two inches up from the hilt. “They say it's a mark of a coward.”
“You’re braver than many of them, son,” Brian said. He had a good guess for the maturity level of the Lunarian. After all, he had taught a lot of freshmen collegians in computer science. He’d wager the young man was somewhere between seventeen and twenty one, and still a bit defensive about his personal courage. But to Brian’s mind saying no to a whole crew of murderous pirates put him as quite courageous indeed.
Opening the hatch brought a stabbing sword into it, and a thrown dagger to bounce around the room. Both men quickly shoved it closed, and locked it. The pirates outside had recovered, and were itching for a rematch. Brian looked around, hoping for something that might help.
“You said you were an ironman?” he asked, still glancing about.
“Yes, I run the nuclear pile that powers the ship, the air plant, the inertia field, the main drive, everything really. It's why they kept him with me, to make sure I did not overload the fission pile and blow the ship up.”
Brian gulped. He was in a room with radioactives. The warning symbols in languages unknown to him, but with clear intent of showing danger, on the hatchway made more sense.
“Uranium or plutonium?” Brian was not that familiar with nuclear fission, but he knew a bit. There was also Thorium wasn’t there?
“What?”
“What’s your fuel?” Brian was just asking because he needed more information. He had no plan yet.
The young Lunarian did not reply for a bit, and Brian looked over at him. Angle was looking back surprised.
“Angle, I come from very far away. Humor me, please.”
“Iron. The fuel is iron, like in all fission ships. We split iron into energy, lead, and other elements according to the De Pretto Equation of E=mv2.”
“V?”
“The universal constant, light.”
“So no Einstein in this world?”
“No, ah, I think there is. We listen to the German radio, and the English radio. You Terris broadcast everything, not caring who might be listening in. He’s been mentioned, but De Pretto got there first. And Einstein is against ether, which is just stupid. Of course, a Lunarian got there centuries before him, and a Saturnian over a millenia ago, but I was trying to talk in terms a Terri would understand. You are a Terri aren’t you? I’ve never met one before.”
Feeling pleasantly filled with new knowledge like he had just had a good snack, Brian noted with minor aggravation that he still had not figured out a way out of the reactor room. He heard banging on the door, and was not surprised when Angle said that the pirates were taking out the bolts on the hinges which would render the hatch no longer a block. On the plus side, he had figured out why everyone spoke English. Earth babbled out into the Universe without a care in the world which meant everyone in the solar system heard them, and that served as a basis for a lingua franca if, as he guessed, each planet or even subgroup on each planet had its own language.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #524: Twisting Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
