Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Her eyelids fluttered briefly. She saw light wood-paneled walls, a rustic quilt on a chair … the honeymoon suite. She sighed and closed her eyes.

  She hadn’t eaten at all during the wedding banquet. She’d been too busy greeting all their guests, too excited and too happy, that was why she was hungry. She shifted against Timothy and remembered with bemusement that they hadn’t had sex the night after their wedding, either. Her mother had said they’d be too tired. And her mom had been right. She frowned. But she hadn’t been too tired to dream … terrible, frightening dreams. A concentration camp, and Timothy being dead, but then saving her and her saving Timothy.

  She wiggled again, trying to get warm, and get closer to Tim. She felt fingers tighten on her hip. The cold … the lack of marital consummation, these could be easily remedied. “Timothy,” she whispered.

  “I am not Timothy,” said a masculine, strangely familiar voice, but not Tim.

  With an undignified yelp, Noa rolled out of bed. Hitting the floor with jaw-rattling impact, she skittered like a crab on her hands until her back hit something solid. Literally, backed against the wall, she stared at the bed. It was a high mattress, box spring combo, very old fashioned, complete with a thick quilt, like the one on her honeymoon. A man was sitting there. He might have been Timothy’s twin, a clone, or the type of animatronic that some people made so they didn’t forget great-grandma, their partner, or their dead child.

  After a beat too long, the not-Tim held up his hands as though in surrender. His jaw shifted from side to side oddly, and his brows drew together. “I am sorry,” he said softly, as though she were a frightened ptery or bird. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  Noa felt bile rise in her throat. She had a moment of complete disorientation and wondered if she was still dreaming. She took a few shaky breaths, and nebulas, the cold still felt like it was clawing at her lungs even in the warm room.

  “My name is James Sinclair,” the stranger said. A part of her brain fumbled to draw up his name on the ethernet and found it still disconnected.

  James’s chin dipped to his chest and his eyes bored into hers. “Don’t you know me?” His voice was too low and rich to be Timothy’s, and there was an urgency in it that was disquieting. He’d either bought an app to simulate the speech patterns of a wealthy Earther—probably European, maybe even British—or he was born into money. She didn’t normally associate with either type of person.

  Noa jerked her head in the negative. Pulling back, he wiped his face, and his eyes went to the ceiling, as though he was seeking some answer in the air. The picture of confusion—or dismay.

  She gulped and looked down at herself … she was a skeleton, dressed in ratty underwear. She sniffed. And she stank. “It wasn’t a dream,” she muttered, her shoulders slumping. The escape, the concentration camp … her eyes fell on the scars on her lower abdomen, the thumb of her left hand touched the stumps of her ring finger and pinky … and Timothy was dead, and it hurt all over again.

  “What dream?” the stranger said.

  Noa blinked up at him. The likeness was extraordinary, and disturbing, but if she focused on him, she saw an artist’s rendition of her late husband, not her Tim. James’s hair color was the same—dark blonde, highlights of nearly platinum; he had the same skin tone, and blue eyes. But this man’s lips were fuller, his nose not quite as long, his jaw more square, and his frame more muscular. He didn’t have Tim’s laugh lines, either. He had the sort of agelessness she associated with Earther plastic surgery and nano-repair. He looked to be late twenties, but could be anything from late twenties to early fifties. He was too perfect.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why was I … ” She gestured to the bed. “With you?” And then she remembered the cold.

  “You had—”

  “Hypothermia,” she said, dropping her eyes.

  “A mild case,” he said softly.

  She shivered again with such force her spine hurt. In the periphery of her vision, she saw James sit up straighter—as though startled. She pulled her knees to her chest and curled into herself. James picked up the covering on the bed and walked over to her. Without preamble, he sat down beside her and draped the thick down quilt over them both, creating a welcome bubble of warmth, but she struggled not to scoot away. Scooting away would show fear—and she wasn’t afraid—not really. She closed her eyes.

  “Commander, the bed is warmer.” His voice was a whisper, concerned.

  “Here is fine,” Noa said, even though the bed would be more comfortable. She didn’t feel violated, but spooning with the doppelgänger of Tim was too much right now. She felt weak and disoriented, and she needed to get her bearings.

  “Very well.” After a pause, he said, “I’d hoped you’d recognize me.”

  She did, sort of. “Nope,” she said, rubbing her temple.

  “But I know you’re Commander Noa Sato.”

  Noa dropped her hand. Her body tensed.

  James didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know how I know that.”

  Tension left her shoulders. In the grand scheme of things in her life that were wrong, that seemed the smallest to Noa. “I’ve been in the press a few times,” she said. “You’ve probably seen me in holos or on the ethernet.”

  Leaning his head back, he gazed up at the ceiling. “Nothing makes sense. This is my parents’ cottage—we were going to spend the holiday here together.” He closed his eyes and massaged his lids. “I came here a week before them to verify that it was safe. I was shot out of the sky by the local forces. The last thing I remember hearing as my ship crashed was the Luddeccean authorities saying, ‘Archangel down, Archangel down.’”

  Noa blinked as her memories came back. “Say that again?” she said.

  “Archangel down, Archangel down,” James said, dropping his hand and blinking at the ceiling.

  Noa’s skin prickled. If she was remembering correctly, he was saying that in the same voice with the same inflection as the Luddeccean who had first made the announcement … Which could have a lot of explanations. Voice chip for damaged vocal cords, natural ability to mimic ...

  Still not looking in her direction, a dazed expression in his eyes, he continued. “I knew that the locals were becoming more fanatic—what with the election of the new premier—but I had not realized the extent of the fanaticism.” He shook his head. “I had all the right permits.”

  A glow bug lit in Noa’s mind. “You are the one they shot out of the sky. You’re the archangel.”

  James’s head whipped to hers. “I am not an it.”

  Noa’s lips pursed, uncertain where that had come from.

  His jaw dropped and he looked away. “I don’t know why they called me that, or why they shot me down.”

  Noa said softly, “Mistaken identity?”

  James’s face remained impassive.

  The speed of the head turn just now, the way he’d ripped the screen off the hover … “You’re augmented,” Noa said.

  Eyeing her and lifting a brow, he touched his data port. “Aren’t we all?”

  Noa sighed. “Yeah, it’s ridiculous, but when were fundamentalists ever rational?” As soon as she said it, she felt off-kilter. Guilty. Earthers like him thought all Luddecceans were crazy. There were a lot of crazy fundamentalists on Luddeccea, but there were wonderful people, too. She’d been to Earth and met “extreme atheists;” she hadn’t found them more moral or enlightened. She was ready to quip something defensive about all extremists, religious and irreligious being irrational, but James was touching the sides of his mouth with the fingers of both hands. The words died on her tongue at the odd gesture.

  “I can’t smile at your joke,” he said, voice almost a whisper. “I can’t frown, either.”

  Feeling a pinch of worry for the strange man, she leaned closer. His skin, where she could see it beneath his fingers, looked healthy—there was no sign of frostbite. She drew back, more pieces of the puzzle clicking together in her mind. “You have to be very aug
mented. They announced the coordinates of your crash over the channel. To reach me in time, you would have had to have run sixty-seven and a half kilometers per hour over mountainous terrain.” The way he was patting his face … if he couldn’t smile or frown, it meant he had augmentation there too, not just run-of-the-mill plastic surgery. But why?

  James dropped his hands. “There was an accident, on Earth, before. I fell, the equivalent of many stories. I nearly died … ” His head ticked to the side in a quick staccato movement. It reminded Noa of some of the compulsive tics Kenji used to have.

  She sucked in a breath. An accident like he was describing would require facial augmentation, not just plastic surgery. If he was telling the truth, then maybe he’d received some damage to his augments during the crash? It would explain his inability to smile. But there was more to his story that didn’t add up. “You had access to the secure Luddeccean channel if you heard their ‘archangel down’ message.” And how had he known where she was? “Are you part of the Fleet?”

  His jaw twitched, and he touched one side of his lip, and then looked down at his fingers. “I am not in the Fleet. I am a professor of history. I specialize in late 21st century. Most recently, I was in the process of reviewing discoveries I made along the San Andreas Rift.”

  Every hair on the back of her neck prickling, Noa interrupted him. “You killed three men.”

  For a heartbeat too long James was too still, his eyes on a place in the distance. When he spoke, his words came out as an uncertain stammer. “Yes … they kicked you, and were speculating on whether to kill you, talking about interrogating you and yanking out your port … and … I couldn’t let it happen … I … I have hunted before, but never killed a human. I wasn’t bothered by killing them, but I am bothered by the fact that I am not bothered, and I wonder if I should be … if that makes sense?”

  Noa exhaled. Her hands flicked to her side—and she remembered being kicked—thanks to Fleet tech she was healing much faster than natural and it wasn’t unbearably painful. “It does make sense,” she said, and she did understand his ambivalence. She had pulled the trigger on more than a few unsavory individuals; it was harder than the holos made you believe. A man with no history of combat, nor apparently in a profession that would have given him training, killing three men? Her throat tightened. Of course, he’d just been shot out of the sky—probably because he was hyper-augmented. The situation was extreme—it could have pushed an ordinary man to extreme actions. And he hadn’t hurt her, or ignored her, or dumped her off the snowmobile when she fainted. He had spooned with her scrawny, stinking self to save her from hypothermia.

  “I feel … disconnected,” James said. His face was turned away; his hand was on his data port.

  “Because we’re disconnected from the ethernet,” Noa whispered.

  His eyes narrowed and he shook his head, eyes roving around the room. “It’s more than that. I feel off, Commander.”

  Noa’s eyebrows rose. Something was off with James, but she didn’t feel threatened. Instead she felt herself softening, seeing him for what he was—a civilian thrust into a war zone, a man who had overcome some physical and probably mental handicaps with augmentation. Her eyes grazed his perfect jaw line, the muscles and tendons in his shoulders that showed just above the comforter that covered them, and remembered the perfectly chiseled body below—his augmenters might have gone too far.

  She sighed. “If you’re not Fleet, you don’t have to call me Commander.”

  Dropping his hand and turning to her, he said, “Very well, Ms. Sato.” His jaw did that odd side to side shift, and he touched it in that self-conscious way.

  He was too close for a stranger, and Noa fought the urge to pull away. “Just Noa is fine,” she said, keeping her voice level. He turned away, and she felt herself relax. She reminded herself that he wasn’t threatening, that he’d saved her, and there was no reason to be nervous or suspicious. Still, there was something else wrong with his story. “If you’re not with the Fleet, how did you know my location?” She didn’t remember her coordinates being broadcast, and her locator was Fleet secret tech.

  “I saw your signal. I felt I had to find you.” He gazed out the window.

  Noa’s brow furrowed. Her secure Fleet signal didn’t rely on ethernet transmission at close ranges, but it was still secure and encrypted. Even if he’d tuned into the frequency, how would he have known it was her?

  He shook his head—it was an odd movement—almost a shiver. “But I knew you were here. I hoped you could explain it.”

  Reaching up to clutch the edges of the duvet, she said, “I think the Luddecceans must have knocked out the satellite transmitter for this region—that’s why the ethernet is down. Maybe the signals were scrambled as they were knocking down the satellite, and you accidentally tapped into the secure channel?” The Luddecceans and her own.

  “A weak hypothesis,” James said, perfectly sculpted profile angled away from her. She felt herself relax, and realized if he had agreed with her, she might have been distrustful. His honesty made her instincts shout, “very strange” but not “danger.” Or maybe she was just too hungry to feel danger. She sank against the wall, the sensation of her stomach curling in on itself overtaking her.

  “Noa Sato … that is a Japanese name,” James said, the lack of segue startling her.

  “Yes,” she ground out.

  “My middle name is Hiro,” said James, “after an uncle four generations back. My parents made me install a Japanese language chip so I could speak to Uncle Hiro and my grandmother Masako.”

  “Huh. I probably have that app,” she said—or her mouth said automatically. She didn’t feel as though her brain had taken any part in saying it. She felt as she had just before tumbling over the root in the forest, or slumping on the bike. She closed her eyes. None of it was a dream—not the concentration camp, Ashley or Kenji.

  “Nihongo wakaru no?” said James, shifting beside her. “Honto?”

  You understand Japanese? Her app translated. Really?

  And she could understand his surprise … Japanese was no longer spoken, except by tiny enclaves of Japanese purists, and the app was rarely installed. To have two people in the same room with the app was rare, indeed. As she thought this, he rattled off in Japanese about how his great-great-something-or-other grandmother had left her purist family to be with his great-something-or-other British grandfather. It was a lot like Noa’s family’s story. Her parents had made her install the Japanese chip so she could talk to her 200-year-old purist Japanese great-great-great grandfather Jun Sato. And nebulas … like her, James didn’t even look Japanese.

  They could bond over that, but at the moment … bowing her head into her knees, Noa whined, “Get me food, James!”

  He didn’t move. “You’ll be all right?”

  Remembering his hunting rifle, Noa muttered, “What, do you have to go kill and skin it?”

  “No, there is food in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Noa said, her stomach feeling like it was trying to devour itself. Remembering her first aid, and how it applied to starvation victims, she asked, “Do you have any soup? Something broth based?”

  “I’ll go check,” he said, standing and giving Noa a view of the well-defined planes of his back and of his backside. She didn’t even remember her brain telling her neck to lift her head. Scrunching her eyes shut, she groaned and banged her head against her duvet-covered knees.

  James came back moments later with two sealed packets of soup in his hand. “Do you want me to warm the tomato or the chicken and rice—?”

  Seizing the chicken and rice packet from his hand, Noa ripped a corner open with her teeth and sucked out a mouthful of broth. James stared at her a moment and then did the same to the tomato soup. She raised her eyebrows at him.

  Settling down beside her and draping the cover over himself, he said, “I’m hungry, too.”

  “Mmmmmmm….” Noa managed. The cheap cold broth from the pac
ket was the most delicious thing she’d had in weeks. With each slurp she felt as if the cells in her body were rejoicing, the fuzziness at the edge of her consciousness was beginning to sharpen. Still sucking on the broth, she began to inspect her surroundings. The wall to her left had a huge window that was half-covered in snow. Outside it appeared to be close to evening—and the wind was howling madly. Inside … had James called this a cottage? The bedroom was nearly as large as the first floor of the house she’d grown up in. There was an unlit fireplace made of pale rough stones. She felt warmth beneath her bare feet—the floor was heated, which meant the fireplace was for decor more than function. There was a plush rug laid out over the wooden floor, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. As she thought that, a tiny cylindrical cleaning ‘bot a few hands wide and half as tall rolled out from under the bed. A light on top of it flashed in their direction and it turned away, obviously programmed to be as unobtrusive as possible. She lifted her eyes. On a dresser across the room another ‘bot was hanging from the top of a mirror, wiping the glass clean. She frowned.

  “You’re definitely from Earth,” she said.

  “Yes,” James answered, lifting an eyebrow.

  Her frown deepened. Earthers. Luddecceans would hire actual people for help; even menial work was better than no work.

  She shook her head. Tapping her data port, she said, “I was out for a whole four hours?”

  “And six minutes and forty-seven seconds,” said James. “Why were they chasing you?”

  The lack of segue threw Noa for a second, but she shook it off. Highly augmented minds sometimes were … odd. “I was on leave to visit my brother. I was picked up on the street, interrogated, and incarcerated in what they called a re-education camp. I don’t know why.”