Echoes of Empire: Book 11 in the Backyard Starship Series by Chaney J.N. & Maggert Terry

Author:Chaney, J.N. & Maggert, Terry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

In South Central Florida sprawls Pirate’s World, a one-time bustling theme park set amid a rambling series of subdivisions. It was a growing concern until around 2000, when its financing started to fray—diminishing attendance in favor of other bigger, more modern parks elsewhere in Florida, combined with the failure and bankruptcy of the area’s largest employer, a sugar company, finally did it in. And while the place had fallen into the expected disrepair over the years, an abortive attempt to refurbish the place and take another stab at operating it in 2015 meant that parts of it were still more or less operational.

And that included the Screamer, a roller coaster that peaked at fifty meters, followed by a forty-eight meter drop. I knew it had been run and certified in 2015, but the attempt to resurrect the park had failed before the first guest arrived. So there it sat, still reasonably intact and, hopefully, only in need of the sort of TLC that a swarm of Conoku could provide.

My crew, and Torina and Perry in particular, were uneasy about the whole idea.

“Van, you’re talking about bringing a bunch of rambunctious alien crustaceans down to the middle of Florida and taking them for rides on a roller coaster. Doesn’t that smack of, oh, I don’t know—a breaking news kind of thing?” Perry asked.

Torina nodded. “You might be about to create a really… um, unique first contact situation, Van. Are you sure you want to risk that?”

Despite the gravity of their concerns, I had to smirk. The idea that mankind’s first hard contact with aliens came in the form of a bunch of sentient crabs waving their claws and shrieking as they plunged over the hump of a roller coaster in Florida was kind of charming, actually. Breaking news was probably right.

Even Zeno was wary. “Couldn’t we just load them aboard some high-performance ship and subject them to all sorts of high-g maneuvers with the inertial dampers dialed down a couple of notches?”

I shook my head. “Funboy has been consulting with Linulla, and through him with Conoku physicians. The whole point of them racing their fast little ships as part of their coming of age is to do what we’re trying to do here. There needs to be an actual element of danger for this to be effective. And as risky as this is, having the Conoku refurbish this roller coaster is going to let them see how primitive the technology is. It’s only going to be as good as the fixes they make to it, and when they ride it, they’ll have absolutely no control.”

“The risk of getting caught and the necessity of avoiding it will also add to the psychological stress they’ll experience,” Funboy put in.

Icky grinned at him. “I wanna see you ride this thing.”

Funboy looked up at her. “Frankly, I’d be far less worried about doing that than breathing the air on Earth. At least a death from the failure of this amusement device will be relatively quick and painless, and not the lingering, painful one of progressive respiratory failure.

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