I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. The short story Hunter's Moon is a story about a special-ops mission performed for a mysterious client. This review contains spoilers.
Here's a question. How do you make paperwork exciting? One obvious way is to sprinkle action sequences between scenes about paperwork. That might seem like a cheap trick. You might argue that a story that's serious about paperwork ought to really dig in and stay focused on the different forms and documents. And in the 8ase of Stardrifter, that's a legitimate argument, because in Stardrifter the paperwork, or at least the process, is gripping. It's hard to understand until you read it, but in Stardrifter stories the "boring" stuff is engrossing, like troubleshooting make-believe gunnery systems, repairing pretend starjump drives, or processing invoices for a special-ops job gone wrong. Somebody in the future's filling out tax form 14A-tack-52? Sign me up!
In the case of Hunter's Moon, the paperwork doesn't disappoint. But because it seems ridiculous for me to insist that paperwork of the future is interesting, I'll distract you with action sequences first.
A small team of operatives have been tasked with obtaining a MacGuffin. They don't know what the MacGuffin is beyond a briefcase, and neither do we. All we know is that Ejoq Dosantos, looking a little older than last we saw him I think, is on the job and he's brought a bunch of new toys for his gunnery station to fire.
The action sequences are pretty brutal. It starts out pretty tame, with the usual ship-to-ship combat. Before all that, though, there's an interesting stand-off. Ejoq and his team come face to face with an enemy fleet. The enemy ships could make short work of Ejoq's team, no problem. But instead they just sit there, quietly hanging in space, locked in a more or less super-threatening stance, and delivering on none of its promises.
What's going on?
Is Ejoq's ship in stealth mode? Is it somehow posing a greater threat than even Ejoq and his team realise? Has something malfunctioned?
It's an uneasy and seemingly inexplicable deadlock, and the process of figuring it out is engrossing. You almost want there to be a poll included with the story. What do YOU think is up with the enemy ships? What should Ejoq and his team do next?
There aren't any absolute answers, in the end, although there is a resolution based on the theories that Ejoq's team devise. They're probably right, and either way everything eventually turns out alright, of course. But it's not without a fight. And it's not without desperation. Things get dicey, and frankly we see some ugly mercenary work. You have to put on your heist visors, the ones that allow you to justify everything done by the Good Guys, even when it involves pulling people's helmets off of them to let them suffocate in zero atmosphere. Big action scenes, action scenes that have a kind of visceral impact. It's different than the anticipation of an outer space stand-off or from the puzzle pieces of paperwork being fit together. Less emotional, more gut-wrenching.
There's a puzzle to the story, of course, because this is Stardrifter. What's the MacGuffin? Who's behind the Two Saints ILLC company that's financed the job? What does the Two Saints ILLC want with the MacGuffin anyway?
Piecing it together happens as exposition between the owners of the security company hiring the Shadowrunners, er, Ejoq and his team. They research company records, they call their super-spy contacts, they talk it out until a picture forms. It's the equivalent of Ejoq and Sally in Motherload figuring out why the meaningless techno-babble nano fibres of the battery containment magnet bottle thing is failing. It's like Ejoq and Dieter in Risk Analysis coming up with ways to reroute the techno-babble power conduits with fabricated parts, and even how to order the fabricated parts without raising suspicion. It's all fake, but it feels so authentic. You're sure there's an internal logic to it. Somehow, you just know that there really is only one right solution, and that you just have to help Ejoq get there.
It's not true. It's fiction. When faced with a problem, David could write anything and we'd believe it. It's easy, watch:
"Ejoq, the warp engine core is decaying! She's gonna blow!"
"No problem, Sally, just spray it down with hexabolide 29."
"It worked! You've saved the day again, Ejoq!"
Obviously that kind of fiction is both short and boring, so we accept that the answer has to be more complex. Stardrifter sells that illusion especially well, I think, thanks to the Voices from the Void podcast, which goes into every last detail of the fictional Stardrifter universe. It's like the Star Trek compendiums I used to read as a kid, the ones containing sewing patterns for the uniforms and deck plans for the Enterprise, but never the schematics for a food processor. Stardrifter takes it a step further, though. It's got the schematics for food processors, and the only catch is that you need a bunch of ingredients that don't exist yet to make it work.
The completeness of the Stardrifter illusion is what makes a paperwork puzzle thrilling. Read this story and sincerely enjoy the thrill of small business accounts and invoicing. I promise, it's more exciting than you think.