Showdown at Jupiter's Edge: A Maxo Magnaveer Adventure

  SHOWDOWN AT JUPITER’S EDGE:

  A Maxo Magnaveer Adventure

  By Daniel P. Douglas

  Copyright © 2021 Daniel P. Douglas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A couple of centuries into the future, life on Earth has changed, yet in many ways, some things haven't and probably never will. Take the eternal, existential struggle each individual wrestles with to one degree or another.

  In 2247, a space cop, Maxo Magnaveer, has seen his career go nowhere for nearly 20 years. He's worked hard and “produced desired results.” Each day, however, Maxo finds true happiness increasingly elusive. "If only I could get promoted," he thinks, “then I will be happy.”

  So many of us say these kinds of things about our lives, but no matter our job titles, income levels, the square footage of our homes, or whatever else we think is important, we remain empty inside and whisper, "I don't know who I am." It is as if our compass only works part of the time, and when it doesn’t, then we feel around in the dark and listen for other voices to guide us without ever trying to answer the other call, the call to discover and be ourselves.

  Then there’s those driven by darker desires. Human nature is probably not going to change anytime soon, which means those seven deadly sins will still animate many people in the future. They will appear wealthy, powerful, wise, and wonderful, and this may entice or convince others to toss the compass aside for good.

  Maxo knows he’s teetering on the edge, and he will have to answer a call, if not the call. His fragile existential bubble is about to burst. And it could not happen at a worse time or place—during a showdown at Jupiter's Edge!

  Daniel P. Douglas, June 2021

  DEDICATION

  To those who understand we are much more than what we do or how much we own.

  Chapter 1

  The Beat Goes On

  The emptiness of Maxo Magnaveer's sense of career fulfillment sucked at his heart and soul like the endless, ravenous vacuum of space encircling his ship.

  “And it’s only Tuesday,” he murmured.

  As a dedicated, 20-year law enforcement professional, he never allowed the slightest disappointment to distort his clean-shaven, handsome face. Nor had he ever forsaken his Cosmic Law Force oath to protect and serve the people and property of Solis et Novem—the colonies, commercial enterprises, and off-world lifelines stretching from Mercury to Planet Nine.

  In Maxo’s mind, his path to advancement in rank and stature was a straight and narrow road designed by higher authority and followed by loyal detectants like himself. The road was supposed to lead to achievement, recognition, and success. It offered purpose and traveling it bestowed happiness.

  Or so Maxo had believed, for the most part.

  At the moment, that path once again took him to Patrol Zone Adam, an enforcement circuit covering the space between Mercury and Venus. Some of Maxo’s best years in the CLF were spent here, chasing down space debris privateers and enforcing speed and sobriety codes among Venusian drift sailors.

  The Venusian drift drew mid-lifers like flies to sugasoup. Mid-lifers were people aged 50 to 60 on break from their various careers courtesy of government-sponsored early-annuity programs designed to accommodate longer lifespans and to promote scholastic and vocational exploration aligned with emerging workforce needs. After their mid-life breaks, people were expected to resume being productive citizens, many in brand new jobs, ones that could not or should not be performed by technology, until retirement in their 90s.

  Of course, Venusian drift sailing was not scholastic or vocational. It was recreational tourism on a planetary scale. The playground was the upper atmosphere of Venus, where drunken adventurers surfed the vortices and currents of the planet’s super-rotational troposphere aboard pod gliders.

  The CLF backed up the security teams deployed by the various cruise companies and orbiting hotels, so detectants like Maxo made frequent trips to Venus. Sometimes these trips were to prevent death, other times to collect the dead. Both situations involved the completion of lengthy CLF reports.

  “You have the stick,” Maxo said to his partner, Senior Patrol Officer Alice Mirza-Cheong, while gazing out their beater’s flight deck window toward Venus.

  “Thank you!” Alice exclaimed, pulling at her curly black hair. “I was about to eat another pound of spicy similo jerky, I’m so bored.”

  After glancing toward the open space ahead, then back to Venus, Maxo said, “Sure, Alice. I will.”

  Alice furrowed her brow and looked at Maxo. “I’m on my period, you know.”

  “You bet I will,” Maxo muttered.

  Peering at Maxo, Alice said, “Permission to fart, detectant?” and raised her eyebrows.

  Maxo was silent, nodding and pursing his lips. He removed his silvery astronautor sunglasses, rubbed his face, then unbuckled his flight seat harness. “I’ll drop down and perc us some coffee.” Maxo took in a deep breath through his nose, then exhaled through his lips for a full 15 seconds. As he had been reading about mental relaxation exercises again, he completed three repetitions of this breathing technique.

  “Ah, never better,” Maxo said.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, sir,” Alice said, “while the coffee percs, why don’t you transmit your application for that new squad captain position that’s opened up? That would be a fine promotion and long overdue.” She winced and wished she hadn’t mentioned the belatedness of his advancement in the CLF.

  After taking another long breath, Maxo flashed a recruitment-poster grin, which faded as he put his astronautor sunglasses back on. “I think they…,” Maxo said, “oh, I am sure they have a fine candidate in mind. Only the best detectants become squad captains.”

  “Oh, you mean like that shit clod Shineer Havlock? What’d he ever do to deserve becoming a squad captain?”

  In contrast to Alice’s angry outburst, Maxo’s retort sounded soothing and well-rehearsed. “I had the honor to train with Captain Havlock in the academy. I am certain he is superior in all manner of performance measures and enforcement outputs. People need to remember the values—”

  “See, Maxo, we’ve talked about this. The system is broken.”

  “—that direct us and give us purpose. They’re not broken. They are revered.”

  “Not really. Not anymore.”

  “And I have dedicated my life to upholding them as a member of the Cosmic Law Force.”

  Alice shook her head and muttered, “Which makes you of all people worthy of that promotion. You’ve more than proven yourself.”

  “Well, I appreciate your kind words, and if I am the worthiest, then CLF brass will promote me. If not, then I will proudly continue to protect and serve the people and property…,” Maxo glanced out the flight deck window and nodded, “of Patrol Zone Adam.”

  He extracted his trim, two-meter-tall frame from his seat and stood. His habitual slouch kept him from dinging his shaved, brown head on the overhead airlock. He adjusted his utility belt and badge, checked his CLF-issued 340mm DynaLaser pistol, then straightened his royal-blue CLF tunic and brushed similo jerky crumbs off his khaki cargoloons. The crumbs swirled away into the beater’s air circulator while Maxo admired the shine on his black, calf-length patrol boots.

  Alice leaned her barrel-shaped body away from Maxo, flatulated, then squinted at him. “Are you going to brew us coffee or stand for inspection,” she said, adding, “sir?”
<
br />   Maxo chuckled and gave Alice a hearty pat on her shoulder. “Set course for Mercury, Code Three.” He wafted his hand in front of his face. “I feel a round of billiards will do us some good upon arrival.”

  “Roger, detectant.”

  ***

  The CLF built their latest beat boats nine years ago, in 2238, at Ford’s sprawling mining, manufacturing, and assembly hub in Mare Nubium on Earth’s moon. A stone’s throw away stood Solis et Novem’s regulatory headquarters in Mare Cognitum which included a facility housing CLF’s First Precinct. That’s where Maxo and Alice were assigned.

  Each beater had two thirty-meter-long hulls, one on each side of a ten-meter-wide, five-meter-high, bi-level service deck. This was topped at the aft by the flight deck, where officers controlled navigation and propulsion, as well as gunnery and electronic enforcement measures. Each hull housed DynaFusion cores to provide power and conventional propulsion, as well as dual Trans-Holo converters which produced hyper-weave, a form of fast, long-distance travel, by interlacing data exchanges between the ship and the universe’s countless innate hologram-generating information arrays.

  As he slid down a ladder from the flight deck to the service deck, Maxo felt steady vibrations from the converters as they injected his beat boat into hyper-weave, shifting them off toward Mercury. He then ducked through a hatch and walked forward to the service deck’s galley. Their offices and an exer-pod were in the next bay forward. Beyond that, the deck dropped to a lower level, where there were confinement cells and an array of supplies, equipment, and interfaces with the boat’s systems.

  All-in-all, the beaters were fast, self-reliant boats, but their design and capabilities limited their use to zone patrol, escort, and pursuit-and-apprehend duties. They were a far cry from the much larger and prestigious CLF Caprices, squads of which were captained by some good people and by some shit clods, such as Shineer Havlock.

  As the coffee percolated, Maxo pulled his compu-pad from a pocket on his cargoloons. He tapped the CLF icon and scrolled to the job openings. He’d read the description of squad captain dozens of times but had yet to submit his video screening interview and updated occupation chronicle to the CLF’s recruitment and placement A.I.

  Maxo closed the page and opened a dictation file called Never Better: 10 Ways to Get Ahead in Life. He gazed back toward the galley and held the pad in front of his mouth. “Number nine,” he said, “if there’s anything I’ve learned here in outer space, it’s that the universe may be big, but it isn’t empty. It is full of places to go, people to meet, and things to do. You just have to decide what’s important to you. The universe can’t make that decision for you. It doesn’t decide your purpose. You do. What makes you happy? What gives you joy? What gets you out of bed each day? You want to be never better? Then show initiative—”

  The percolator beeped and interrupted Maxo’s dictation. “And…” He shook his head and dropped the pad back into his pants pocket. “And become a shit clod. You’ll get whatever you want,” Maxo grumbled.

  While injecting sippy mugs with fresh, hot coffee, he tapped sugar and cream dispensers. Alice took hers with double cream and Maxo added cinnamon to his through an additional condiment injector. As the son of an Indonesian mother whose family had been in the spice trade since the Chinese Supremacy of the late 21st century, Maxo grew up enjoying cinnamon in many foods and beverages. While attending the CLF Academy in Toronto, he purchased cinnamon sticks in the commissary and always included ground cinnamon in his quartermaster requests prior to each beat boat patrol.

  The cinnamon’s scent reminded Maxo of his boyhood, much of which was spent playing and fishing along the beaches of West Java. This was where he thought of nothing other than living and working in space as a cop. That was to be his way of “getting ahead in life.” Not that he had a bad life in Jakarta, but his mother told him he was facing a dead end there. For many of Earth’s children, this was true, and so it was for Maxo. Despite the global cataclysms of 2095, 2126, and 2201, there were still too many humans on Earth for the planet to sustain them. So, many Terrans migrated to Mars, Venus, the Moon, and Jovian moons, which became new homes and birthplaces for humanity’s masses.

  Maxo contemplated how uncertain he had become. With his mid-life break a decade away, the thought of spending another day working for the CLF as a mere detectant weighed like a ton of space debris on his shoulders. He blamed himself, thinking if he’d only worked harder, things would’ve improved. He did take on extra shifts, and broadened his insights by reading self-help books, one of which—Never Better: 10 Ways to Get Ahead in Life—he started to write on his own while recuperating from an incident on the Moon at the CLF’s laser pistol range.

  Standing amidst the galley’s shiny chrome veneer, Maxo peered at the reflection of his royal-blue tunic from behind his silver-tinted sunglasses and saw a high definition yet dim view. He then remembered he’d been aboard beat boats for over 15 years and could navigate their interiors blindfolded. A contest with Alice once had proven it.

  Maxo shook his head, pulled the compu-pad from his cargoloons, and transmitted his application to the human resources A.I., mumbling, “I’m no shit clod.” He dropped the compu-pad back into his pants pocket and grabbed the coffee mugs.

  He returned to the flight deck unaware he received an auto-response from headquarters regarding his application. It read, “Thank you for your submission, but the application period for this position, Squad Captain, has closed. We appreciate your dedication, but we will not be able to consider you at this time.”

  ***

  Earth’s space debris piled up in orbit for almost a century before space-faring nations adopted a coordinated waste management plan in 2052. As it turned out, when these nations established and implemented this plan, they created the foundations for what would become the solar system’s behemoth management franchise now known as Solis et Novem.

  Born as a trash hauling service, Solis et Novem utilized artificial intelligence from the beginning in almost every aspect of their operations, which kept costs down. Hence, they won contract after contract, most of which were offered based on the recommendations of Solis et Novem’s own A.I.s for everything from R&D and management of mining rights and shipping lanes to synthetic food production and colonial sanitation systems, the latter reflecting their modest origins.

  They did not own or operate the Cosmic Law Force. Before the United States collapsed in December 2091, the remnants of NASA’s manned space program outbid Solis et Novem for the enforcement contract offered by Earth’s United Space Nations. These countries and others recognized this fortuitous check and balance on the growing colossus, and many of them, including Grand Canada and its southern neighbors Mexas and Walmarida, pledged trillions of Vespuccian World Coins in annual support to the CLF.

  “I’ll bet you a hundredth of a ‘Pucci that I make this shot,” Alice said, activating the beat boat’s targeting systems.

  “You think I’m made of coin?” Maxo replied. “Besides, by my calculations, you’d have to strike the starboard side of that old mineral tug and send it smashing into the tailpipe of that ancient hauler. Assuming you hit it with—”

  “Fire away!”

  The flight deck rattled as Alice fired six 300mm rounds from each of the boat’s two pellet launchers, the 23rd-century’s equivalent of cannonball blasts. Looking over the top of his sunglasses, Maxo watched the swirling buckshot race toward the target, which turned out not to be the tug.

  Instead, Alice had aimed at—and hit in rapid succession—two meshed bundles containing thousands of link-a-matron satellites. Bagged like a bunch of potatoes, these grapefruit-sized orbital devices once brought uninterrupted communications to facilities on the Moon. Now categorized as space junk, they had been towed, just like thousands of other objects, by Solis et Novem’s pulse drones into equatorial orbit around Mercury, the solar system’s space machinery junkyard. In time, some pieces were sold off to aspiring entrepreneurs or cash-stricken na
tions, and some—in a kind of CLF target practice called space junk billiards—were pinged out of orbit into a final, fiery spiral into the Sun.

  “Alice, I don’t think those were authorized targets.”

  “Wait for it.” Alice punched a keypad on the flight deck console between her and Maxo, which lowered a small, overhead video screen.

  “What am I waiting for?” Maxo asked. “To be sued by a Solis attorney? Now that would be something, especially when I’m trying to get promoted.”

  “Just wait for it, Maxo!” Alice raised a spicy piece of jerky to her lips and paused.

  Thermal images of two tumbling bundles of link sats appeared on the video screen. Their trajectories converged toward the end of a long array of solar panels, which sent the array rotating through space like a boomerang. It spun toward the old mineral tug and smacked it so hard the array shattered, scattering reflective bits into space and casting shimmering light onto Maxo’s and Alice’s faces.

  Alice bit into the jerky and watched the video screen as the old tug barreled into the ancient hauler, punching it out of orbit and onto a trajectory toward the Sun. “Bullseye!”

  “We’ll talk later about your choice of targets,” Maxo said. “Now, watch this.”

  “Watch what? Besides, since when do link sats ever sell? They are the poster children for junk.”

  After Maxo raised the beater’s defensive shields, he activated the patrol lights on the bow of the boat and launched two flare drones toward the disintegrating solar array. “Wait for it…,” he said, then fired thrusters taking them in closer.

  Maxo deactivated the video screen and switched on a heads-up display in front of the flight deck window. “See it yet? I only caught a glimpse when you smashed the solar array into a billion bits. It’s running dark or out of service.”