Tag Archives: Haley

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 9

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“No idea,” I said, “except for the last ship they’ve all left people in our system, and I’m using ‘people’ pretty loosely so I can include the machines.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that a small ship had left the “pirate ship.” It shot off at high speed, and disappeared behind Earth. I didn’t see any signs of battles, but on the other hand, could I have?

Vaughn watched the small ship disappear. “Huh. Could be that one.”

Haley shook her head. “Maybe.”

This wasn’t getting easier. “Lee said something that made it sound like he expected it would be pirates, or at least look like pirates.”

Vaughn turned his head toward me. “What do you suppose he meant by that?”

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 9 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 8

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Vaughn turned around the room, staring at the spaceships. “Wait, I thought you had to go through the jump gates.”

“I guess not,” I said. “I kind of knew that, but I wasn’t sure how far I could trust the information. Basically, jump drives are really big, and they need a big power plant to run them. That means they’re mostly found in the really big spaceships. Capital ships, and some of the larger cargo ships.”

Haley eyed me through her mask. “So a capital ship is a big ship?”

“I think. I may have it wrong, but generally they’ve got the most armor and firepower.”

Vaughn stopped looking around, and looked directly at me. “So how do you know?” Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 8 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 7

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With a sinking feeling, I followed the path. Low, blueish-green light illuminated the hall. Given the hall’s liquid metal material, bioluminescent light seemed unlikely. On the other hand, the Xiniti were aliens. They might easily light their halls with lifeforms outside my experience.

Collecting a little bit to analyze would have been interesting, but I had a bad feeling that the Xiniti wouldn’t approve. They were here to prevent us from gaining more technology unless we developed it on our own, and had the authority to commit genocide to prevent it if necessary.

The Xiniti felt like they owed the League somehow, but I wasn’t going to push it.

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 7 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 6

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We didn’t have time to say any more about it as I let the ship float into the landing bay. I kept my mind on coming to a full stop, turning on the external anti-gravity to use what little gravity there was, and also lowered the landing gear.

Behind us, the force shield went up, followed by huge doors rolling out of the floor and shutting, and finally their artificial gravity slowly turning on.

That gave me more gravity to work with, meaning that I didn’t have to use the maneuvering rockets inside the bay. Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 6 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 5

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Next to me, Haley paused as she’d been turning back toward the dashboard. “A pretty good time?”

Lee smiled wider. “The best. In moments like that people stop worrying about how you get things done. They need it done, and they don’t have time to care how. Say you have a Skerrish battle station orbiting the planet. Normally you’d try to talk them into leaving, but if you’re in the middle of a battle, barely anyone cares if you ram them with one of their own heavy cruisers. As long as the battle station’s out of the fight, no one complains.”

Haley turned back to the dashboard without saying anything, and we took the jet out the underwater airlock into Lake Michigan, the engines humming as we traveled underwater. Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 5 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 4

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“That, and I suppose when you kill as many people as he has, the enemies add up.” Plus he wasn’t exactly nice about it. The few times I’d seen him fight outside of training, he’d pushed people’s buttons deliberately.

That’s the kind of guy who would end up on the run from his entire species, leaving them pissed off enough that they destroyed any planet they found him on. Granted, it wasn’t just because of that, but it put things in perspective.

Normally they committed genocide over the long term. When they found he’d influenced a planet, they did it immediately.

“Exactly. You need someone to balance out the crazy.” She sounded amused.

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 4 →

Arc 6.1: Intergalactic Sherlock

Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 3

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By Wednesday night I had a response from the Xiniti—yes. I could take the League “jet” to the jump gate and go through their logs. They’d be happy to help investigate. In fact, they were already doing so on their own.

Not that they told me so directly. Lacking an official Xiniti email address, I’d emailed Isaac Lim, and he’d sent it on through appropriate channels. I had no idea how much bureaucracy “appropriate channels” involved, but the impression I got from Lim was “too much.”

Whatever the case, I’d gotten my reply within twenty-four hours of asking Agent Lim, so I wasn’t in a position to complain. At least I wasn’t in a position to complain about that. I was in a position to complain about what they’d done with the Xiniti’s reply.

Continue reading Intergalactic Sherlock: Part 3 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 7

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Then Travis turned his attention back to Daniel’s dad. “OK, you said that your dad, the Mentalist saw this coming. What did he see?”

Quickly shaking his head, Mindstryke said, “It’s not exactly like that. For my dad, Daniel, and I, precognition comes without a lot of control at first. Seconds in the future are easiest. Everything else comes unasked for, but over time you become better at directing it. The problem is that there isn’t just one future, there’s an infinite number. Some of the differences aren’t much, but they’re there.

“My dad got to the point that he could see futures as collections of connected events, and even look for specific outcomes. He gave us patterns of events we should look for and a few spots where we can intervene. Mostly though, we can’t. We guess it’s because you’ll become too reliant on us, and unprepared when you need to handle things yourselves.

“And that leads us to today. We were going to wait on handing over direct control to you, but we can’t. You’ve just gotten too much attention. As of now, the League’s business issues need you to have the power to make decisions. We won’t have time to handle it. The staff doesn’t have the authority.”

“The staff?” Travis sounded confused. “The only staff I know about is Kayla.”

Continue reading Spin: Part 7 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 5

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By the time our food came, anyone who had wanted an autograph had one. There weren’t that many people in the restaurant after all.

A fair number of them pointed phones in our direction. It didn’t make me feel better. It’d be really annoying if one of us accidentally used a real name. We’d probably see it all over the internet in hours.

Daniel’s voice popped into my head. It gets worse. One of them already called a television station, and they’re sending out a reporter.

What? It was all I could do not to say it out loud. Why didn’t you say something?

It’s no big deal, Daniel said. The nearest TV station is half an hour from here. Our food should be here sooner.

Hoping that no one thought to bribe the cooks, I looked over the room again, and didn’t see anything unusual. Continue reading Spin: Part 5 →

Arc 5.9: Spin

Spin: Part 4

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Quickly Haley said, “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but were you planning on going in costume? I don’t think any of us have real clothes along.”

I thought about that, imagining going into restaurant as we were. For all I knew, Izzy might sometimes use what she was wearing as workout clothes. Plus, eating with the Rocket suit’s helmet on was possible, but ugh…

Then I said, “Do you think IHOP does take out?”

She said, “Nick, everybody does take-out.” She straightened up in her seat. “So let’s go. I’m hungry too.”

From behind us, Cassie said, “Good. Because if you were going to say that we shouldn’t get food, I was really going to argue.”

Continue reading Spin: Part 4 →