Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Noa inhaled sharply. Leaning on her elbows, she said, “I know, but I don’t have a better idea.”

  “I do,” Manuel responded.

  Noa sat back in her seat. “What do you have in mind?”

  From the front room James heard the sound of Hisha’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Protests,” said Manuel. “Some of us have been planning them even before Time Gate 8 was destroyed. I can organize a ‘spontaneous’ show of civil disobedience within days.” He waved a hand. “And we have access to weapons and explosives for those of us who will be aboard the Ark.”

  “We need more engineers for the Ark,” Noa said. “A ship that size will need a crew. I’ve got a list of Fleet personnel in my data banks, but I don’t know whom to trust.”

  Manuel nodded quickly. “I can find you a crew.”

  At that moment, Hisha walked into the room with a child clutched in her arms. He appeared to be sleeping, his head pressed to her shoulder.

  “He’s beautiful,” Noa said, although the child’s thick, fleshy face was distorted by its own weight, and one of his sagging arms was visibly cybernetic as well—plastic and steel that the Manuels hadn’t bothered to cover with synth-skin. His ‘beauty’ was subjective, James decided. He had a hazy memory of saying such things himself in the past. But he also remembered confiding in a friend that he didn’t want children because they were a “burden,” “expensive,” and “drooling pools of disease.”

  Manuel slid out a chair, and Hisha’s body sagged into it, giving credence to James’s observation about children being a burden. The woman twisted her body, and James could see a dark wet stain of drool on her shoulder, giving credence to that observation as well. Manuel cleared his throat. “And my wife, she doesn’t have combat experience, but she would be useful aboard the Ark … ”

  Noa was silent.

  “I’m not afraid,” Hisha said quickly, her eyes getting wide. “I … would do anything … For my child, I would even kill.”

  Noa looked back and forth between the couple. Her lips flattened.

  “You just … you have to let us bring him,” said Manuel. “You can’t make it to the Ark without our help. You don’t know which members of the veteran’s community have fallen for the Luddeccean philosophy, you don’t know whom you can trust. I do. And you know you can trust me—” He looked at his wife, rubbed his chin, and looked back to Noa. “You can trust us.”

  Noa’s chair screeched against the floor as she scooted backward. “No. Manuel, I can’t take the three of you … ” Her eyes fell on the sleeping child and up to Hisha. Her lips thinned, and she turned back to the Lieutenant. “Manuel, I’ll take you, yes … ” She looked back at Hisha. “But Hisha, you and Oliver have to stay here; you don’t want to bring your child into this.”

  “I have to get him off the planet,” said Hisha, clutching the child tighter, the pitch of her voice noticeably higher. “His heart will have to be replaced in a few months! It won’t be big enough for him for very long—he’s growing so fast.”

  Voice tremulous, Manuel added, “I know, best case scenario you can get to the gate in the cloud in two Luddeccean months, but who knows how long it could take for the Fleet to plan a campaign after that? It will get caught up in bureaucracy.”

  Noa’s voice was soft as she replied. “You know that, when we commandeer the Ark it’s going to be bloody. If something happens to your son during the firefight, you won’t be able to focus on anything else.” Rubbing her temple, she sighed audibly. “A child will disrupt everyone’s focus.”

  “I’ll sedate him,” Hisha said.

  “That isn’t what I mean,” said Noa.

  James’s brow rose, not sure what she did mean.

  “Hisha,” Noa implored, “Please stay here, for your child’s sake.”

  “We won’t have anything to remain here for, if Oliver dies,” Hisha said. “And he will die if he stays here. We know that … we will stick with the mission … even if … ” She swallowed.

  Noa put her hand down too heavily on the table. She released a long breath. “I don’t like it,” Noa ground out, leaning back in her chair.

  James looked between the couple and Noa, weighing their arguments. Stepping closer to Noa, he said, “We don’t have time to find another engineer … and finding a doctor was pure luck.”

  Noa looked up at him sharply.

  “Each time we contact someone, Noa, we put ourselves at risk for being turned in. We are better off accepting their help and the risk to their child.” He waved his hand at Oliver, still asleep on his mother’s shoulder.

  Noa crossed her arms. “The risk to bring the child on the ship—and then, once he’s aboard—”

  James shrugged. “If your objection is based on the risk to the child, there is no argument. He may die trying to escape; he will die if he stays here.”

  He heard Hisha gulp at his words, and Manuel shifted in his chair.

  “I’m not just worried about the risk to the child,” Noa snapped. “I’m worried that the child may endanger the entire crew.”

  James looked at the baby. His small cybernetic hand clenched in his sleep.

  “Please,” said Hisha. “We’ll work hard. We won’t let ourselves be distracted.”

  “Of course you’ll be distracted!” Noa said.

  Oliver stirred in his sleep, and Hisha shushed him. Eliza sank lower against 6T9’s thigh. A whirring noise came from the ‘bot’s chest for a few moments and then went silent.

  Noa sighed. She cradled her elbow with one hand, and massaged her temple with the other. For three heavy minutes the only sound was Hisha patting Oliver’s back.

  “He can come,” Noa said at last.

  “You won’t regret it,” Hisha said.

  Noa’s jaw tightened. “I do already.”

  With his hyper-augmented hearing, James picked up a thud above, and then another. Dropping his hand to Noa’s shoulder, he exclaimed, “Someone is on the roof!”

  Manuel cleared his throat. “Those are members of the opposition movement. I summoned them when you first arrived with the change in light bulb.”

  Noa looked at him sharply. “Military?”

  Smiling tightly, Manuel said, “Not even close. Kids. None over twenty-five. It would be better if you hid in another room.”

  “You don’t trust them?” said James, feeling alarm flare in his mind.

  Standing from the table, Manuel said, “I trust them to cause unrest. I don’t trust them to hold their tongues if they are arrested.” He looked at Noa. “The less they know about you—”

  “—the better,” Noa said, standing. She looked at Manuel. “They traveled across the roofs?”

  Manuel shrugged. “It’s the easiest, safest way. Even the sewers are being patrolled now.”

  “Huh,” said Noa, her eyes narrowing slightly. “How far does the rooftop highway go?”

  “About a quarter mile,” said Manuel.

  Noa didn’t reply, but the barest hint of a smile crossed her lips. James felt his neurons alight with alarm.

  Noa snapped toward 6T9. “Wake up, ‘bot, we’re moving out.” James could no longer see her face, but he could hear that same ghost of a smile in her voice.

  “James, can you hear them?” Noa whispered.

  They were so close that he could feel her breath against his cheek. Both of them were sitting next to the door to the bedroom they were hiding in, listening to the “opposition meeting” going on below. He could hear every chair squeak, every elbow on the table, and next to him he could hear Noa’s breathing, faint and raspy. Across the room, on a bed, he could hear Eliza snoring softly, with 6T9 sitting beside her in hibernation mode.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can hear them very well.”

  Noa took a long breath. Again James heard a slight rasp. She’d started breathing heavily when they came up the stairs.

  “Hard link with me, James,” Noa said. “I want to hear, too.”

  For a moment, James sat mot
ionless. The memory of her revulsion still stung. Below them the opposition members greeted each other. He heard hands clasping, and what he was fairly certain was backs being thumped.

  “I’m sorry about last time,” she said, averting her gaze. “You … reminded me of someone. It’s … strange. I’ll keep a better handle on it this time.”

  James wanted to ask who, and then he realized he probably knew. The mysterious Timothy. He remembered her darting up and away from him when they’d been huddled in his parents’ cottage after he’d asked her who Timothy was. He nodded at her and retrieved the hard link, nestled next to his laptop in a small bag.

  A moment later, opposite ends of the port were in each of their data drives. For a fleeting instant, Noa was unguarded. For less than a second, James could sense something, which was withdrawn and concealed quickly; then, Noa’s filtering app must have kicked in, because he could feel nothing at all. It was disquieting, and also disappointing, he couldn’t say why.

  Downstairs, he heard the tone of the conversation shift, and quickly began relaying the words, exactly as he heard them … and suddenly found himself in the kitchen surrounded by medium height, slightly tan, faceless people. He blinked. The kitchen was blurry and out of focus.

  Noa appeared among the faces. She was wearing her fleet uniform.

  “Fleet-issued avatar for these sorts of mental conferences,” the vision of Noa said, her avatar gesturing to the mental imagery. She looked exactly as she did in his earliest memory of her. He felt the familiar thrum of want, and was glad he could hide it from her. She was so close in the mental and physical worlds.

  Not party to his thoughts—or desires, literally or figuratively—Noa continued, “I’m trying to imagine exactly what’s going on.”

  James looked around the blurry kitchen and filled in the details for her. The faceless opposition members he couldn’t picture—they hadn’t had a chance to see them—but he knew their genders by their voices, and their weight by the sound of their footsteps and the way the chairs sounded as they slid across the floor. So he filled in those sparse details, too. An instant later, the mental image of the kitchen was exactly as he remembered it, and the tan placeholder people had more human appearance.

  Noa’s avatar shook her head. “Of course, you’ve got that holographic memory app running, you would remember everything.” Her avatar walked through one of the opposition leaders and bent down to look at the table. “I can’t believe you remembered the wood grain, though.” Straightening, her avatar looked around. “This is amazing.” She backed away from the table, where the constructs of the opposition leaders were drinking and complimenting the food.

  “Don’t you have an avatar?” Noa’s avatar asked him.

  “Several,” he said, activating his avatar app.

  Noa blinked—or, her avatar did.

  James let his avatar look down at itself. His mental persona was wearing what he’d wear to a lecture hall—high-necked long silver jacket with patched elbows, black trousers, and polished shoes.

  Noa laughed, or her avatar did, and she was exactly the image of the healthy vibrant woman from James’s memory. “Patches on your elbows? Of course … I forgot. You’re a history professor! For a moment there … ” She looked around the mental space. “Well, I’ve only seen this sort of detail in internal ‘scapes created for military ops, or in history class.”

  James shrugged. Since the opposition leaders were still talking about things that didn’t seem terribly important, he changed the scene to the interior of 10 Downing Street, residence of the Prime Minister of England. He gave it the décor that it sported during Margaret Thatcher’s administration.

  “Amazing,” Noa’s avatar said again, taking in the antiquated furnishings. She let an emotion sift through. Emotions from another person over a hard link were like seeing an image through fog. Not as powerful as an emotion that belonged to yourself, but somehow more rewarding than hard data. He felt his real lips in the physical world want to curl up. She was feeling wonder. Although he couldn’t smile, his avatar could and did. Noa’s avatar beamed back at him. “And it’s nice to see you smile.”

  In the physical realm, he touched the side of his face. “It is nice to be able to smile.” She walked over to the desk and peered down at it. “No wood grain.”

  James tilted his head. “Nothing before the fall is as clear.”

  Noa’s avatar looked up at him, brow furrowed. “The fall … ”

  James changed the scene, and Noa shrieked as they fell down past the Ponderosa pines. She jumped at the ‘impact,’ and he switched the scene to a generic white room.

  “It was a miracle you didn’t die,” she whispered. “With the organ damage you would have received … they had to augment you.”

  A miracle? To James, something felt off with that assessment, and he felt a chill race along the neurons beneath his skin. Down below, he heard Manuel explaining, “So I said that I used the signal for a reason … ” and he changed the scene back to the kitchen. Noa’s avatar turned and gazed on the generic avatars of the opposition with laser-like focus. Manuel told the opposition that they needed to stage protests before rapid DNA testing was the norm—which James thought was a weak premise for a hasty gathering of forces—but the opposition ate it up. When it was over, and the “guests” were leaving, Noa made him replay the conversations that occurred while they had been distracted. As Manuel and Hisha were saying their goodbyes, Noa’s avatar whispered in his mind, “We’d better unlink. I get the feeling that Manuel and Hisha would be scandalized if they found us hard linking in their house.” She winked and smiled. Considering her revulsion, James didn’t find it funny. Maybe due to his lack of reaction to the joke, or her own distaste for him, Noa yanked out her link too quickly for comfort. Just before their link was severed, James sensed her concealing something again. Winding the cord around his hand, he wondered, was it just revulsion she was hiding, or something else?

  Standing quickly, Noa took a deep breath and slipped out the door. Tucking the cord away, James followed. As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he felt the world shrinking and growing dark at the edges. He heard Noa ask, “A hidden stairwell?”

  At her words, his world came into focus again. Manuel was standing at the end of the hallway by a floor-to-ceiling block of shelves loaded with toys, physical books, and replicas of starships. It was situated at a forty-five degree angle, like a door ajar.

  Manuel shook his head. “No, not really. This house is so small, I tried to utilize every bit of space efficiently.” He pulled on one side of the shelf, and the unit opened fully to the steep stairwell beyond. “It wouldn’t be a good place to hide. All the townhomes are built to the same plan, and any patrol searching places would know there’s a hidden space behind the shelves, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Nah,” said Noa. “I was just admiring your handiwork.” She peered into the space beyond, and played with the door herself, opening and closing it. “Nice workmanship. No squeaky hinges for you.”

  Manuel snorted. “I am an engineer.”

  Noa tapped his shoulder with a fist. “You think this is small after living on a starship?”

  Face visibly flushing, Manuel mumbled, “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she said, “You said that any patrol would know that this space was here—but you have piles of rope, a rope ladder, and climbing equipment?” James’s world began to get dark again. He heard Manuel reply, “That is part of our fire safety evacuation kit. We’re responsible parents, Commander.” James could no longer see the equipment; the hallway became progressively darker and more blurry, tunneling into a narrower and narrower frame. He remembered a snippet of innocuous conversation a few minutes before. When Hisha had asked the visitors if they were hungry, one had said, “I’m so hungry, I feel like my stomach is eating itself.” Like a chain reaction, that memory sparked others from before the fall. He’d made similar statements on occasion and had felt that s
ensation before. The room felt suddenly very cold, although the temperature had not dropped. Suddenly he found it was a struggle to stand upright.

  “Are you alright?” Manuel said, his concerned face blurry on the periphery of James’s vision.

  “I’m starving,” he said. But he felt the hunger in his mind, not his body, and he knew that was very wrong.

  Noa opened her eyes to darkness, in the too-chill house. She was lying on the floor in the spare bedroom, a blanket thrown over her. Tomorrow, she’d meet her crew. In 48 hours’ time, they’d be in space, bound for the Kanakah Cloud and the hidden time gate. The most important thing she could do right now, before all that excitement, was sleep. She sat up anyway.

  Her eyes slid toward James. He was lying on his back, his eyes closed. Illuminated by a single beam of a fluorescent street lamp slanting through a crack in the blinds, his skin appeared blue. Maybe it was that bluish cast, the fact that his lips were fuller than Timothy’s, the slightly aquiline curve of his nose, or the delicate wing-like shape of his eyebrows, but he looked more Japanese than Caucasian. His eyelids didn’t flutter as Noa gazed down at him.

  She took a deep breath—and felt as though she’d barely breathed at all. Jitters, maybe? Or apprehension? As a fighter pilot, she’d participated in clearing the asteroid belt of System 6. The fire power of the carrier that played base to the fighter squadrons hadn’t been at all useful in the tight conditions of Six’s belt. Worse, the asteroid minerals dampened drone sensors; so, human pilots had to go in. When a squadron went in for a sweep between the densely packed asteroids and the pirates, it was pretty much guaranteed that only two-thirds would come back out.

  In those sorts of conditions, pilots began developing rituals before each mission. Noa would kiss Timothy on the cheek three times before she left. She would perform the sign of the cross although she was only Christian by heritage. Then she would slip her wedding rings in a tiny carbon fiber envelope that she tucked into the left pocket of the under layer she wore under her g-suit. Once, after thirty-six missions, after she’d slipped her rings into that pocket, Timothy had kissed her an extra time. She’d taken her rings out, put them back on her fingers, and went through the ritual all over again. The protection such rituals gave might have only been mental—but that didn’t make them any less important. She fiddled with the stumps of her fingers.