Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  “You think I did this?” I asked quietly.

  “Well, you gotta admit, it’s one hell of a coincidence that right after you appear my day turns to shit.”

  Fran turned her chair and looked me in the eye. “Spill.”

  “There’s nothing to spill.”

  Shepperd locked his steely gaze on me. “I now have at least three days’ worth of repairs to do, which means I gotta dock in some backwater port, which will attract unwanted attention. Given how we’re suddenly too hot to handle, I’m gonna have to pay off every fucker who thinks they can palm me off to fleet. Plus Chitec will be looking for you, and they sure ain’t gonna shake my hand and give me a pat on the back if they find you with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, honey, I’m a bad person.” He said it as though he wore his reputation like a badge of honor, but it was a lie. All of it—the ship, his life—was all wrapped in lies. Captain Shepperd hid behind his sharp tongue and bravado. Though I’d yet to understand what he was hiding from, I would uncover it.

  “Why are you on my ship?”

  “I—” I paused. Because I am #1001, and I follow orders. “I’m not sure.”

  Fran glanced at Shepperd.

  He shook his head, smiling. “You’re a machine. How can you be unsure about something? You view Fran, this ship, and me in measurements. There’s no room in that head of yours for uncertainty. So let’s try this again. Why are you on my ship?”

  I follow orders. Orders from her. She disabled my failsafe. She let me go. She . There, again, the error. Where was it coming from?

  “You think I won’t force it out of you?”

  I blinked back at the captain and saw a new hunger in his eyes: violence. He believed me to be a threat to his ship, to his life. He’d kill to protect both, as well as his secrets.

  “What happened in twenty-three-sixty-eight, Captain?” I asked.

  The violence in his eyes burned down to anger. “You tell me.”

  “I can’t. Your data file is clean. Not a single entry. That year has been professionally scrubbed.”

  He shrugged, ignoring Fran’s sideways glance. She didn’t know either, but my words had alerted her.

  “I know you were dismissed from fleet in that year, because the next entry in your data file is a purchase order for Starscream in the name of Caleb Shepperd.”

  His anger didn’t last as I’d expected it to; it turned cold, into defiance. He stilled, like a predator ready to pounce. “I was dismissed for misconduct.”

  “So it says in your service record. Until that point you were on the fast track, climbing the ranks quicker than any other pilot your age. What crime could be so great as to derail one of the fleet’s finest?”

  He held my stare, and I held his. He wouldn’t win, not with me. He could bully, bitch, lie, cheat, and fight, but none of it mattered to me. As he’d so rightly pointed out, all of this was just measurements, just data.

  “I’m leaving you at the next port,” he said, “and be grateful I’m not shoving you out the airlock. Believe me, I’ve thought about it.”

  He turned back to face the window. Neither of them noticed my slight smile.

  Chapter Ten: Caleb

  With the warbird no longer tripping our proximity sensors, we’d booted up the gravity generator, which left a whole heap of chaos strewn about my ship. Yet another mess to clean up.

  I sat on my bunk, alone, and tried to work my thoughts around a solution. We’d been stuck in shadow behind the wrecked freighter for two hours. That’s a long fuckin’ time when there’s a warbird hunting you, a synth asking too many questions, an asshole brother looming in the rec bay, and a criminal tied up in the spare cabin. The synth had calmly informed me that Fran’s paying guest was a bounty hunter. Couldn’t he have just been some harmless guy thumbing a lift to the next system? No. Because this was fuck-with-Shepperd day.

  I ran a hand around the back of my neck and pinched the aching muscles. At least the synth hadn’t killed the bounty hunter. Fran had assured me the hunter’s lack of credentials meant he wouldn’t leave a paper trail, so we could ditch him. But I didn’t fancy arriving at the next port and having the authority ask me why I was down a passenger. Because my stowaway synthetic human thought she’d kill him, and rather than store him beside our illegal cargo, we thought we’d give him an honorable send-off into the endless black. Yeah, that’d go down well.

  I’d tried to sleep, as Fran had so helpfully suggested, but my thoughts had kept whirring. Fighting I can do. I can fight all night until I’m the last man standing. But waiting? Waiting left too much room for wondering, and wondering led me to thinking, and thinking alone in my cabin led to dark thoughts and darker places.

  The synth was smart. She clearly wasn’t about to forget about my missing year, and now, neither would Fran. Shit. Fran was probably already drawing up a list of ways to figure out why I’d lied to her. She thought I’d been in Asgard. It was a half lie muddied with truth. Maybe I should leave her at the next port too.

  An uncomfortable ache hollowed out my gut. Two years with Fran. Sure, I hated the bitch, but the thought of walking away from her turned my stomach. Whatever personal problems we had, she was the best pilot in the nine systems, even better than me. And in fleet, I’d been untouchable. She’d been right about one thing: she was too good for me. If it weren’t for her phencyl habit, she could have had anyone and anything. Fuck, she could have been a fleet commander. Talent like hers was nearly impossible to find. I didn’t want to let her go.

  A few quick knocks on my door brought me back to the present.

  “Fuck off unless you have good news.” I rested my elbows on my knees and bowed my head, threading my fingers through my hair.

  “I need to talk to you about the synth.” Bren.

  “It’s open.”

  He entered and gave my cabin his usual down-the-nose look of disgust. At least he’d ditched the fleet jacket. He still looked impossibly stuck up his own ass, but he was stuck with me, on my tug, after having his own crew fire on him. Yeah, there was satisfaction to be had there.

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean.” I smiled.

  He shut the door and pulled out my desk chair, sitting forward with his hands clasped in front of him. Dad used to sit like that when he wanted to talk and remind us how much we were loved. I doubted Bren realized he was mirroring Dad’s posture. Bren wasn’t our father, I knew that, I did, but there were times when he looked like him, talked like him. The curse of being brothers, I guessed.

  “She doesn’t exist.”

  “Huh?”

  “The synth.”

  “What?”

  “Chitec was only ever licensed to make a thousand synths every ten years. That’s it. Not a single one over, or else the ever-after project would have been shelved.”

  I shrugged. “So she’s one more.”

  “You don’t get it. It couldn’t make more. Otherwise we’d all be signing up and no one would stay dead.”

  I laughed. “You mean everyone rich enough.”

  “That’s still thousands of people.” He rubbed his hands together. “One thousand every ten years. That’s all. So your One Thousand And One doesn’t exist.”

  “Clearly she does. Chitec created one more.”

  “Why?”

  “For fuck’s sake. You sound like Fran.”

  “Fran’s smarter than you.”

  “Don’t you start. At this rate, I’ll be leaving everyone at the next port and flying myself right on outta there, alone.”

  “Chitec wouldn’t create an extra one. The company’s already making a fortune auctioning off its one thousand. If it got out that it could make more, the prices would decrease. Supply and demand. Chitec limits the supply to a thousand to keep demand high. Those synths sell for a billion each.”

  “Yeah, I know, that’s why I didn’t ditch her. Though I wish I had.”

  �
��So Chitec went against its own best interests to create one more synth. Don’t you want to know why?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Fuck curiosity, man. Keep your head down, move under the radar, get paid, and move on to the next job. There ain’t no room in my life for curiosity, not anymore.” Not since the missing year everyone is suddenly so interested in.

  If Bren continued to look at me like that, as if he were disappointed in me, I would break his nose.

  “You weren’t always like this,” he said.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I ground out. “Then I got burned.”

  As far as he or anyone outside of fleet knew, I’d gotten kicked out for misconduct, ended up spending a few cycles in Asgard, and came out the other side as a smuggler, arms dealer, and thief. Sometimes I wished it had been that simple.

  “You know fleet has an awkward relationship with Chitec,” Bren said. I glared at him. “Fleet uses their weapon tech. They give fleet a discount, and everyone stays happy.”

  “And fleet looks the other way when Chitec says so?”

  “I’ve never seen any evidence of corruption.”

  What he failed to realize was that I had seen evidence of corruption; fuck, I’d been neck deep in it.

  “I think fleet is on to you because of the synth. Chitec probably pulled a few strings. The company wants the extra synth kept quiet, so fleet is doing them a favor. What I can’t figure out is why they had my warbird fire on me.”

  Because, Brother, it’s much easier to claim something was an accident after you’ve blown all the witnesses into itty bitty pieces.

  I sighed. “Look, I’ll drop you off on Ganymede. You don’t need to get caught up in my shit.”

  Bren nodded. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  “Don’t.” If he started digging, he’d wake up in Asgard. As it was, he’d be lucky if his career survived. “I’ll be fine. Just get your ass back to command and tell them I’m an asshole. They’ll believe that.”

  He smiled. “And what about the synth?”

  “I’m ditching her on Ganymede, and Chitec will get an anonymous comms message telling them exactly where to find her.”

  Chapter Eleven: #1001

 

  Caleb-Joe…. Aren’t you just a little bit curious?

  Don’t let him do this. Don’t let this happen. Please …

  Don’t

  Let

  Me

  Go

 

  I blinked awake, the sound of my gasp hissing in my ears, and found Captain Caleb Shepperd leaning over me, peering deep into my eyes, as though expecting to find something inside me.

  “You sleep like the dead.” Judging by his abrasive tone, he hadn’t slept at all. He blinked, and a slight frown gathered shadows on his face. I had an inexplicable urge to touch him, maybe brush my fingers across his lips. Nonsense thoughts. But my fingers twitched. I dug my nails into the arm of the chair.

  He backed off and stood watching the starlit black wash by the window. “We’re on our way to Ganymede for repairs. Fleet aren’t welcome there, but Starscream is.”

  “Why?” I asked, startled by the sound of my voice. For a moment it hadn’t sounded like mine.

  “Cargo means trade. Trade means credit. Credit makes the worlds go ‘round.”

  “Only if you have it, Captain,” Fran muttered from her flight seat, hands dancing over the controls.

  I’d run my rest protocols while we were waiting for the warbird to leave. If anything, I felt worse for it. How long had I been out? “The commander’s ship?”

  “Gone. But if they decided to keep digging, they’ll be checking the ports. I need to get Starscream in and out of Ganymede as smoothly as possible. Lucky for us, the authorities on Ganymede are as crooked as I am.”

  “But you’re not … ” I trailed off. Stray thoughts interrupted my processes.

  Don’t

  Let

  Me

  Go

  “You okay?” Caleb frowned at me over his shoulder.

  “I—” I touched my fingertips to my forehead. “I’m— Yes, I’m okay.”

  Fran stretched. “You take the controls. I’ll see about getting our passengers something edible.” She pushed from her seat once Caleb had taken over the controls. As she passed me, our gazes locked. Her green eyes said, Follow me. I did, grateful to be moving and for the distraction.

  Halfway down the catwalk, Fran reeled on me. “For whatever reason, Cale doesn’t want to question you. You distract him and turn the conversation back on him so he quits interrogating you. That won’t wash with me. Tell me why you’re on this ship.”

  I dropped my hood and lifted my chin. “I follow orders. It’s what I am designed to do. I can’t tell you why I’m here.”

  “Because you’ve been ordered not to?”

  I couldn’t reply even if I’d wanted to. She strode forward and stopped so close I had to lift my head a little to meet her gaze.

  “Can you tell me whose orders you’re following?” Each word was clipped with fraying control.

  I tried to speak the name, but it wouldn’t come, so I settled on one that would. “Chitec.”

  “Chitec sent you here?”

  No reply.

  “Fuck.” In a blink, she had me by the throat and up against the panels. “Is it the guns?” When I didn’t reply, her nostrils flared and her green eyes widened. “Have they found out that we’re running their weapons? The drugs then? Bitch, just say the words. Nobody will know.”

  “I can’t.”

  Her warm grip tightened, closing off my airway. I could stop her, but Caleb wouldn’t be pleased, and it seemed important, suddenly, that I not disappoint him, as though it might hurt if I did.

  I am #1001, and I I follow orders.

  I knocked her grip aside as though she were nothing and slammed her against the opposite wall with my hand clamped around her throat. I lifted her off her feet. She hissed and spat, and I smiled in response.

  “You should know, I could break your neck without either of us feeling a thing.”

  “Do it,” she hissed. “Because if you fuckin’ hurt Caleb, or this ship—” She wheezed, gasping air. “I’ll tear into you with my bare hands and won’t stop until there’s nothing left but scraps.” She clearly had an emotional attachment to Caleb, something that went beyond their working relationship.

  I released her. She punched her palms into my shoulders, shoving me back, but it was more for show than as a real threat. She was smart enough to know that coming at me head-on wouldn’t get her anywhere, but she would try another angle. Of that I was certain. From what I’d seen of her, Francisca wasn’t the sort to let anyone or anything get the better of her.

  But what sort of person was I?

  Ganymede port was an outdated hub poised on vast supports over the moon’s frozen surface and resembled a huge, fat spider. The port had once thrived, but times had changed, and like much of the original system, Ganymede had fallen out of favor with fleet, which chose to look the other way rather than waste resources policing a forgotten moon.

  Fran docked us, the ship shuddering into place, and the engines wound down.

  Shepperd unclipped his belt. “We’ll be here less than three days,” he told Fran. “Out in two if I can pull in a few favors. I need you alert while I suck up to the assholes who run this place. You’re my eyes and ears while I focus on getting us out of here.”

  “I’m on it,” she said while powering down Starscream’s systems.

  Shepperd looked at me. His lips twisted, betraying something like reluctance mixed with uncertainty. “Stay here until I come get you. I’ve gotta unload the bounty hunter without raising any eyebrows, and you’re too conspicuous. Get out of the hood and put on a flight suit, mayb
e”—he waved a hand in the general direction of my face—“let your hair down or something so you’re not so obviously a synth.”

  “Is that an order?” I asked.

  “Does it have to be?”

  I blinked back at him and for a few moments neither of us moved or looked away.

  “And what about the commander?” Fran leaned back in her flight chair and mock-fluttered her lashes. “You just gonna let him walk away?”

  Shepperd grunted something derogatory on his way off the bridge then added, “I can’t do anything else.”

  With the captain gone, Fran glanced over her shoulder at me. “Why don’t you go see if there’s a flight suit in my cabin that’ll fit you?” Her gaze roamed over me the way it had outside the bridge while we’d been listening in on the brothers. “The captain will be gone for a few hours. Relax. Do some sightseeing, although there isn’t much to see.”

  I read honesty in Fran’s eyes, but a hint of something else flashed there too. Her heart beat a steady rhythm. Everything about her seemed controlled and deliberate, unlike the captain’s tendency to act on impulse. Her level of control could be powerful. Like the ship, and the captain, Francisca could easily be hiding more than her appearance led me to believe.

  I’d take her advice, and use the free time to study her and the ship in more detail. It appeared both Starscream and her crew had secrets.

  Chapter Twelve: Caleb

  I found Bruno—the fat fuck who ran Ganymede from the inside out—in one of the many bars along Ganymede’s trade strip. Tinkerbelle’s—it was a sweet name for a rancid dump. They did however serve some of the finest below-board whiskey in the system, and considering all the sucking up I was about to do, I needed some of the good stuff to prop me up.

  My face ached from the constant effort of keeping up my fake smile during bullshit small talk. Yeah, business was booming, fleet were assholes, and the poor got poorer while Chitec manufactured the weapons for fleet to keep them that way. I’d downed a few glasses just to give my hands something to do while Bruno grumbled like he cared, which he didn’t. Folks on Ganymede cared only for folks on Ganymede, and that was using the word “care” loosely.