Alibi Jones

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  Alibi Jones is the beginning of

  The Adventures of Alibi Jones

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  ALIBI JONES

  BY MIKE LUOMA

  Copyright 2009 by Michael Luoma. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written consent of Michael Luoma except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Special Thanks to my friends Nate Condon and Sarah Scott who have helped these books take shape since Vatican Ambassador, and to Danielle Deforge who helped whip Alibi into shape! Cover Illustration by Federico Guillen.

  For information address Michael Luoma at:

  [email protected]

  Dedicated to my science fiction writing heroes,

  Robert A. Heinlein and Frank Herbert

  Prologue

  My name is Alibi Jones... Do I really have to do this Aunt Anita? Really? Posterity? What? All right! Only because it's your birthday! Shh... I'm doing it!

  Hello. My name is Alibi Jones. I'm recording this for my Aunt Anita's birthday... All about me and what I'm up to? Okay. Even though she won't tell me how old she is! Ouch! Hey! That's child abuse! You tell me I'm very immature for twenty-five! What? Oh, they can just edit this out. I don't want to start ov... oh, for Pete's sake!

  Hello. My name is Alibi Jones. Uh, Jones isn't really my original last name, but it's what I've been calling myself for the last ten years. I didn't want to use either my father or my mother's name. My Aunt Anita said I could choose my own last name. So I chose Jones. My aunt raised me... when she wasn't busy running the universe! She used to be the head of the Solar Alliance. She was the Prime Representative of the SA, Anita Capituna.

  She's not really my "aunt", but I've always called her that. She's been awesome! And I'm not just saying that because it's her birthday. She's been both mom and dad to me.

  My biological mom Ruth Kim is locked away in an institution. She's, um, what they call "criminally insane." She snapped when I was about three. My father's dead. He died when I was really young. My mom, uh... murdered my father. That's kinda where the whole "criminal" part of her insanity came in. You could say I've got issues!

  "Alibi" really is my first name. Got that and my slightly Asian good looks from my mom. Aunt Anita tells me I get my restless nature and my uncanny knack for getting into trouble from my father.

  I never knew my father, Bernard Campion. Everybody called him "BC". Yeah, he's THAT "BC". The one who ended the war and brought the alliance together to fight off the Eldred and the Ancient Enemy, Dolomay. Kind of weird to learn about the father you never knew in history class at school. No, you probably never heard about me in class. My father didn't even know I existed until the end. He met me the day he died.

  I kind of remember that day. You know how old memories are from when you're a kid. Stuff from when you're really young seems kind of dim. But something that traumatic kind of sticks with you.

  I remember being in a giant church. I remember her shooting. I remember him falling. Kind of fucked up. I mean messed up. Sorry, Aunt Anita. That's ancient history now, almost twenty-three years ago. This is now! It's 2035, the world's a different place!

  The post-war baby boom helped us all move into space, as annoying as those kids are. I call them kids, ha! They're just a couple of years younger than me, but they act so entitled, you know what I mean? People went overboard with that whole "golden children" thing. Spoiled them all! Self-centered, arrogant... what? Sorry, Aunt Anita. They piss me off... Anyway, since the colonies are where the excitement is, that's where they've been going to find fame and fortune or something. Guess I'm just annoyed because I was there first!

  I don't get back to Earth very often. This is about as close as I get most of the time, Ceres Central. This is like home, where I grew up with my aunt. It's been a few years since I was on Earth. My actual home base now is usually my place on Cat's Eye. Part of the old "Project" complex on the colony. Actually, it's Aunt Anita's old place. It's a good base of operations for what I do.

  What do I do? Let's see... I do a lot of things! It's kind of hard to explain. I fly ships. Fix things. I work mostly for the Solar Alliance Mediator Corps. We're affiliated with the Solar Alliance Interstellar Force, SAIF, except that we're negotiators, not fighters.

  We help negotiate trade agreements between human companies and alien races. Sometimes we help negotiate between different alien groups. I've done that a few times. I basically go wherever they tell me to go, try to listen to both sides even when they're completely alien. The boss says go – I go. It is kind of nice to have free run of Solar Alliance space in my Cruiser. Well, sort of free. I do have to go on my assignments!

  But I do get to travel deeper into alien space than most people. I've met the Dakhur, who kind of look like big cats. I helped them negotiate with the Flaze. They're the bony-looking aliens we met back during the war. Met them and the Domo back then, that vampire race that died out. That reminds me! That's where I don't go – the dead worlds! That was the strangest thing to find out here. Remember when those aliens, the Eldred, all died at the end of the war? They died en masse on a lot of planets out here! Whole planetary populations turned into rotting piles of corpses! Pretty sick stuff.

  So there are all these worlds, the dead worlds. You don't want to land on them. Those vampire aliens the Domo taught us that by their grim example. They tried to clean up and take over one of the old Eldred planets and ended up getting sick. I don't know if they ever found out what it was, but it seemed to effect just the Domo. They were an adaptive, kind of parasitic race, you know, like vampires or cannibals or something, so they may have, uh, "ingested" something bad. Destroyed most of their race! Which was sort of okay. They were kind of creepy, anyway. Well, they were! You said so yourself, Aunt Anita! They sucked, heh. Sorry.

  Anyway, their deaths kind of served as examples to everyone else. No one lands on the dead worlds now. You don't know what you might run into. The Eldred had old weapons that had been handed down over hundreds of thousands of years. They might have launched plagues and other stuff as they died, weapons that originally belonged to the Ancient Enemy. Of course, that also makes those planets potential treasure troves of ancient tech – if you can find a planet that isn't poisoned.

  The Eldred called their old masters the Ancient Enemy. Dolomay was one of them. When he died at the end of the war, the Eldred all died, because the Ancient Enemy were finally gone. Somehow, the Eldred's existence was tied into theirs, probably because the Eldred used to be the Ancient Enemy's servant race. I don't know, maybe I do know more about the history of the war because my father was involved. And because Aunt Anita talks about it all the time. What? You do! Okay, not ALL the time, but still!

  Without the Eldred, things are a little crazy out there. They used to keep control over things. If they were around, I wouldn't have a job. No need for mediators when someone is simply in charge, you know? Some aliens have gotten pushy. The Tek'Tah are a good example of that. Ugly things, like trashcans with eye stalks and tentacles growing out of the top. They've been expanding their territories. The Mediator Corps has been trying to explain the concept of negotiation to the Tek'Tah. So far, they just don't get it! I've heard of other aliens, too, like the mysterious Devrizium – they don't show themselves to anyone.

  You know, we're really just on the smallest edge of the space the Eldred used to occupy. And after I finish this recording, I'm hea
ding back out there! Got another job to do. It's supposed to be an easy one this time. Of course, that's what M'Bekke always says. I didn't think the Pope was allowed to lie like that! He's gonna see this, right? Ha! Well, that's kind of where things are with me right now. And, um... Happy Birthday, Aunt Anita! Let's hope it's another great year! That didn't sound too fake, did it? Good...