Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  The screams intensified. Miala wanted to put her hands up to her own ears to block out the horrible sounds, but she knew she shouldn’t betray any weakness in front of their captive. So she sat very still, reminding herself that this man had been in league with the people who had stolen her son, and that he was most likely the only chance she and Thorn had of recovering Jerem.

  Suddenly she heard a terrible little thud, and risked a quick glance over at their captive. Blood streamed down the side of his head and neck. He stared down in horror at the fleshy lump in his lap, a lump which up until that moment had been attached to his skull.

  You will not get sick, she told herself, you will not...

  “So,” Thorn said casually, “any thoughts pop into your mind now? If you get to a hospital in the next half hour or so, they’ll probably be able to attach that ear. Of course, I can’t let you go unless you tell me something.”

  The man was crying, Miala realized, his face streaked with a dreadful mixture of tears and blood and snot. But he remained silent, and Thorn sighed and lifted the m-blade once more.

  “I can keep doing this, you know,” he remarked. “There’s your other ear, and all your fingers—and other portions of your anatomy you’ll probably miss even more.”

  “All right, all right!” the man screamed.

  Thorn lowered the molecular blade the merest fraction of a centimeter and waited.

  “I—I never been there,” their captive gasped. “But I overheard Rogin say something about meeting up later at Stony Point Park. That’s all I heard. I swear.”

  The mercenary looked over at Miala. “You ever heard of a place called that?”

  “Yes,” she replied, thanking God or whatever power governed the universe that she actually had. “It was an amusement park out on Rendarlin Point. I think I took Jerem there when he was three or four. It’s been closed for the past few years, though—they kept saying they were going to give the place a major overhaul, but I think the deal fell through. Last I heard, some developers were trying to buy up the place for a high-priced housing development.”

  “But it’s empty now,” Thorn said.

  “I think so. That is, the place has had a security perimeter up for at least the past two standard years, and it sure looks abandoned.”

  “Great place to carry on a clandestine operation,” the mercenary said. “No prying eyes, no one to see what you’re up to. Isn’t that right?” he added, fixing his captive with a flat, black-eyed stare.

  The man gulped. “Uh, yeah, guess so. Like I said—”

  “—you’ve never been there. Yeah, I got that part.” Thorn glanced over at Miala. “Looks like we’d better get going.”

  Immediately she stood, taking care to keep from looking at the blood-smeared face of the man Thorn had tortured. Even though she supposed that the torture had proved useful, she didn’t feel any better about it.

  “What about me?” the man asked. “I told you what you wanted to know. Aren’t you going to let me go?”

  “No,” Thorn replied, pulling out his gun. As Miala looked on, horrified, he shot their captive directly in the head. At once the man slumped over, and slid off the packing crate and onto the dusty ground.

  Although she didn’t remember doing so, Miala realized she must have made some sound of protest. Thorn glanced over at her, his face expressionless.

  “But—why?” she managed at last.

  “I don’t leave messy loose ends. He could have I.D.’d us.” Moving purposefully, he grasped her by the arm and pulled her away from the dead man, back out through the entrance to the warehouse. Then he re-entered the security code to lock the door. Afterward, he pulled a piece of silky gray cloth out of his pocket, wiped down the keypad, and gestured for Miala to get into the commandeered car.

  It was only after they’d left the warehouse complex that he spoke again. “I’d rather you didn’t have to see that. But these things are necessary.”

  Yes, she supposed in his mind they would be. Everything else had to be subordinated to acquiring the target. If that meant torturing a petty criminal who was clearly in over his head, or killing him in cold blood when he was no longer useful, then so be it. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d seen Eryk Thorn kill someone—and she suspected it probably wouldn’t be the last—but she still felt shaken by what she had witnessed.

  For a long moment she said nothing, and merely watched as Thorn piloted the aircar through Rilsport’s streets. He didn’t seem to have any apparent destination, but she knew better. No doubt he was simply making sure that they weren’t being followed.

  Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Just get our son back.”

  He gave her a long, searching look, no doubt seeing in her face the inner struggle she felt over having to accept what he had done as an ugly necessity. When he spoke, he sounded supremely confident. “You know I will.”

  Miala wondered how high the body count would be by the time Thorn accomplished his goal. At what point did one say the cost was too great?

  Never, she realized. Not when it’s the only way to save our son.

  And with that grim resolution to steady her, Miala reached out and placed her hand on top of Thorn’s, where it rested lightly over the gear shift. He said nothing, but she could feel his fingers wrap around hers and squeeze gently. Taking strength from his touch, she let him drive them forward into the night, as they headed toward a confrontation she couldn’t begin to imagine.

  27

  Some days, Rafe Creel thought, I’d really like to tell my bosses what they can do with their “police procedures.” But frustrating as the routine might be, he knew there was a reason for all the painstaking care that had to be taken at a crime scene like this, all the slavish following of departmental policy. Still, right now he just wanted to tell them where to stuff it.

  He watched glumly as Jessa Kodd stood a few paces away, apparently having a polite but heated debate with Dax Trandis, a fellow Homicide detective. As Creel was technically a member of Internal Affairs, he had no official connection to the investigation of the two dead men Thorn had left behind in the docking bay’s corridor. After the initial questioning was complete, he had shuffled off to the side while Jessa dealt with the less pleasant fallout of their involvement in the firefight. Although she seemed to be keeping her cool, he could tell she wanted nothing more than to reach out and give Trandis a good smack across the jaw.

  It would be worth seeing, Creel thought, but he knew Jessa would never blow a gasket like that.

  So he shifted his gaze from the two bickering officers to Thorn’s battered-looking ship. If it even had been Eryk Thorn after all—the man hadn’t batted an eye when Creel called him by his real name, but that didn’t mean much. Of course Thorn would have to be a pretty cool customer. But you’d think the galaxy’s greatest mercenary would have been a little more...impressive. Oh, sure, the guy had gotten the drop on Creel and Jessa without much trouble, but up until that point he hadn’t seemed particularly fearsome. Just average height, swarthy, features somewhat coarse—this Captain Marr, or whoever he was, didn’t seem the type to attract someone as beautiful, talented, and rich as Mia Felaris. So what was the deal?

  Still, the ship did match the description of the mercenary’s fabled Fury, even with the serial numbers scraped off the hull and a number of other heretofore uncatalogued custom touches in place. Several officers had tried to get near it, and immediately a series of internally mounted pulse cannons had bristled forth, obviously ready to take out any intruders. Since the ship hadn’t been directly involved in the firefight, the investigating personnel had decided to leave it alone for the time being. Creel wondered if they’d ever be able to get inside.

  Of more pressing importance, however, was getting the dead man’s boots taken to the lab and analyzed as quickly as possible. At the rate the crime scene team was handling the investigation, that wasn’t going to happen before Mia Felaris and her mysterious companion were long gone, but Cr
eel refused to give up hope that the shell samples might yield some sort of valuable evidence.

  At last, though, Jessa stepped away from Trandis and headed over to where Creel leaned against the rough concrete of the corridor’s wall. “Hope we’re not boring you,” she remarked.

  “Not at all,” he replied, standing up straight and giving her a quick grin. “I was about to start taking bets on how long it would take before you ripped out Dax’s jugular.”

  “I wish,” she said, and then gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Talking to him is like trying to explain Marland’s third law of thermodynamics to a service mech.”

  Creel almost laughed, took a closer look at her tired face, and decided against it. Instead, he dug in his pocket for the little plastic case of gum and handed it to her. “It really does help.”

  She didn’t bother to protest, but instead shook one of the pale blue oval tablets into her hand and popped it in her mouth. “At least I finally managed to convince him that we could take one of the boots over to the lab, so as soon as they’re done tagging it, we can get out of here.”

  “Great,” Creel said, but with a lack of enthusiasm that was obvious even to him.

  To his surprise, she gave him a quick pat on the arm before saying, “I know it’s not much, but we do what we can, right?”

  He had to remind himself of that during the excruciating minutes that followed, right up until the time the precious boot was finally released to them, and Jessa was able to beg a ride for herself and Creel back to the station. The evidence labs were located on the fifteenth floor of RilSec’s headquarters, and luckily they were staffed around the clock.

  As he and Jessa entered the the main lobby, Creel gave a quick glance at the chronometer that hung on the wall above the reception desk and tried not to shudder. By now it was almost 0100, and he guessed the night was going to drag on for a lot longer than that. His work didn’t usually require him to run around at all hours of the night, but he was going to see this through to the end, even if it meant being up for fifty standard hours or more.

  They showed their badges to the woman at the reception desk and went on into the maze of hallways that connected the offices and workrooms of RilSec’s crime labs. Jessa seemed to know where she was heading, so Creel followed her lead. Her job required dealing with physical evidence, whereas his work of late had mainly involved conducting interviews and sifting through innumerable computer records.

  After going around several corners and down one long corridor, Jessa stopped in front of a set of double doors. She pressed the button on the intercom and said, “Howard? It’s Jessa. I’ve got something I need you to look at.”

  The right-hand door beeped, then swung inward to admit them. Creel raised an eyebrow at Jessa. “Howard?”

  “Howard Dael,” she replied, and paused. “My ex-husband.”

  He felt his mouth drop open slightly, then said, “Oh.” After that he gave a small mental groan: Real suave, Creel! How the hell had she managed to keep such an important piece of information hidden from everyone in her department? He worked in a different division, true, but if something like that had been common knowledge, Creel would have eventually found out.

  Jessa’s own mouth curved slightly in one of her patented “I’ve got a secret” smiles. All she said, though, was, “Let’s go.”

  Still feeling a bit off-kilter, he followed her down a narrow hallway that had a faint chemical smell he couldn’t quite identify. From there they entered a large room lined with all sorts of complicated equipment and a number of computer displays, both flat-screen and holographic.

  From seemingly nowhere appeared a rumpled-looking man only a few inches taller than Jessa. He blinked at her, then at Creel, and said, “The evidence?”

  For a second Creel could only gape at the man, who had to have at least ten standard years on Jessa and who probably would have been the last person Creel would have picked out of a lineup as her ex-husband. Then he recovered himself enough to hand over the boot, which had been vacuum-sealed in non-permeable polymer at the crime scene.

  Dael took it and immediately set off for an elaborate piece of equipment that Creel thought he recognized as some sort of high-powered microscope. He raised an eyebrow at Jessa, who shot him an amused glance but said nothing, and instead turned to watch as her ex dipped his hands in the self-skinning nano-polymer material that would prevent any contaminants from touching the evidence.

  Well, she sure didn’t love him for his people skills, Creel reflected. Or his looks...maybe that means I have a chance.

  That pleasant line of thought, however, was interrupted by Dael saying, “Definitely local.”

  “What’s definitely local, Howard?” Jessa asked, in tones more patient than Creel would have expected of her. Then again, she’d probably had plenty of time to get used to her ex-husband’s quirks.

  “The shell fragments,” he replied, not bothering to look up from the eyepiece of the microscope. “Let’s take another pass...” He made a minute adjustment to a dial, then said, “That’s got it.”

  “Got what?” Creel demanded, but Dael just pushed past him to the flat computer screen immediately to his rear.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So what is it, Howard?” Jessa inquired. She appeared to take in Creel’s scowl, and a tiny flicker of a smile ghosted around the corner of her mouth.

  “Arthreni rilsportianus,” Dael replied, with a note of triumph in his voice.

  “Arth...what?” Creel demanded.

  The lab tech blinked, then said, “A rare breed of mollusk, one that’s found in only one location.”

  “And where would that be?” Creel asked. Damn, he’d had hostile witnesses who’d given up information more freely than this guy.

  “Rendarlin Point,” Jessa said. Creel gave her an incredulous look, and she went on, “I minored in marine biology at the university.”

  She’s just full of surprises, isn’t she? Creel thought. “So you’re saying our bad guys are hanging out somewhere on Rendarlin Point?”

  “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  It snapped into place then, as he tried to figure out what could possibly attract a bunch of thugs to Rendarlin Point. The old Stony Point amusement park. It had been closed for several years, but the structures were still intact, and it offered rare isolation while still being in close proximity to Rilsport proper. Maybe he still hadn’t quite gotten the why of all this, but at least he’d narrowed down the where.

  “Let’s go,” he told Jessa, who looked a little surprised.

  “Shouldn’t we be calling in a strike team?” she asked.

  Creel shook his head. “Not until I know who—and what—we’re up against.” He nodded at Dael. “Thanks for the intel.”

  The man blinked. “It was an interesting specimen.”

  There being no real way to reply to that, Creel just nodded again and then headed out to the corridor, with Jessa following him, a slightly puzzled look on her face. Maybe she’d been expecting some sort of sarcastic comment about her ex, but Creel knew better than to go here. Instead, he stopped in the main lobby, and grinned down at her.

  “You ready for some good old-fashioned recon?”

  She grinned back. “Of course. I’m glad you know how to show a girl a good time.” And with that she sauntered off to the elevators.

  Typical, he thought. Always has to get in the last word.

  Somehow, though, he found he didn’t mind too much.

  Finally Thorn brought her to a small café on the outskirts of town. Miala ordered a tall mug of coffee and hoped it would be enough to see her through the night.

  “Isn’t this a waste of time?” she asked. Now more than ever, she had the sense of time flying past her, every precious second increasing the possibility that something terrible could have happened to Jerem.

  The mercenary hadn’t bothered with artificial stimulants. He drank some of the local mineral water he’d ordered, and took a
bite of the steak he’d gotten to go along with it. Miala knew she should have gotten herself something as well, but between a few horrendous flashbacks to what had happened in that dingy little warehouse and her ever-growing worry over Jerem, she knew her stomach wouldn’t tolerate anything heavier than the coffee.

  Thorn shook his head. “The kidnappers are expecting to meet with you in the morning. After this you’re going to take a cab to the Rilsport Plaza and try to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep?” Miala repeated, with open incredulity. “How the hell do you expect me to sleep at a time like this?”

  “Because you need your rest,” he replied. “I can go seventy-two standard without sleep. Can you?”

  Much as she hated to admit it, Miala knew she couldn’t. Even now, despite the spurious energy brought on by the coffee surging through her veins, she knew her current wide-eyed state wouldn’t last. Sooner or later she’d have to get some sleep.

  Thorn appeared to take her silence as tacit agreement, for he continued, “I’ll ditch the car someplace in the city. Then I need to get back and retrieve the Fury.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” she asked. “You know RilSec’s going to have people watching the landing pad.”

  A lift of one straight dark eyebrow. “Not a problem.”

  From anyone else, such a comment would have sounded like false bravado. Coming from Thorn, however, it was probably no more than the simple truth. Something had been bothering her ever since they left the two RilSec officers trussed up on the floor of the docking bay, however. “You know, Thorn, you say you don’t like loose ends, but you didn’t kill those two cops. Why?”

  His mouth quirked a bit. “It’s one thing to waste a two-bit hood that nobody’s going to miss. It’s quite another to be a cop-killer. I thought about it, but I decided that having all of RilSec’s resources focused on finding me probably wasn’t that great an idea. Besides, the one officer might have guessed at who I am, but he still doesn’t know for sure...and who’s gonna believe him? Anyway, he doesn’t know where we went, or where to find us. This city’s big enough that I don’t think he’ll be able to track us down by the time you rendezvous with the kidnappers.”