Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  I used to believe stars were wishes, that if we reached them, our dreams would come true.

  I closed my eyes and listened.

  But the stars will always be out of reach, and no amount of dreaming will capture them.

  Losing myself in the memory, I could see her, all those years ago, so honest and so broken. We’d sat on a pier then too, just the two of us, the night everything had changed.

  A high-pitched whistle whirled me around. A group of nine hooded figures strode down the pier, cloaks rippling.

  Aw, shit. The Fenrir Nine.

  They held Fran restrained between them. She bared her teeth, snapping and snarling like a wild animal. They threw her to her knees. I lunged forward. The foremost figure withdrew a pistol from inside his cloak and pressed it to the back of her head, halting my dash.

  “Tell him,” one of the Nine ordered.

  Fran dragged her gaze up. “Shepperd, I— It’s not true.”

  It had to be about the drugs. If they didn’t fuckin’ kill her, I would. “What is this?”

  “Tell him.” Hooded guy nudged her in the back of the head with his pistol.

  “Fuck you,” she snarled.

  He struck her and I jerked forward, only to have the pistol pointed at me. I couldn’t see his eyes or any of their faces below their hoods. I knew them though. The Fenrir were the people who kept me in business, the people who were about to give fleet a rude awakening, and the ones who wanted Chitec reduced to rubble almost as much as I did. They moved in groups of nine. Always nine. Always anonymous. And they’d brought Fran to me at our scheduled meet. They wouldn’t have risked exposing our connection unless they were damn sure it was already too late. Whatever was happening here, it was heavy. I had my pistol, but really didn’t want to blow customer relations away.

  “She’s fleet,” Hooded said. His accent was old Earth, like mine.

  I laughed. “She’s not Fleet. If you knew her, you’d know there’s no way—”

  “We have a source.”

  Oh, they had a source. That made it okay then—not. I kept my smile on and my hand loose at my side. I wasn’t about to believe nine hooded strangers and an anonymous source over the best second-in-command I’d ever had.

  “I’m not doing this. If you have a problem, you come to me, but not like this.”

  “We don’t have a problem with you, Shepperd, just who you’re associated with.”

  “So you’re going to execute her?”

  My heart thudded a little bit faster. In Asgard, they smelled the fear on fresh meat. I’d learned early on to hide my reactions. The Fenrir knew what I was capable of, hence why they kept me busy and well paid. Would they risk losing me and Starscream over a third-party source?

  “Look again at your second, Captain Shepperd. Until you do, you won’t get another shipment from us.”

  They left the pier, dissolving among the water homes like ghosts.

  I’d just lost ninety percent of my income.

  “Say something,” Fran said.

  I couldn’t meet her gaze, not yet. I didn’t want to see her face and what expression might be there: guilt, desperation, denial? Turning my back on her, I laced my hands behind my head and looked out over the quiet sea, dampening my urge to let loose my rage. Was she fleet? I’d have known it; I could smell fleet a mile away. She couldn’t be. It had to be a mistake.

  “Cale?”

  I dropped my hands. If I kept her on as my second, the Fenrir wouldn’t hire me again. I’d lose my income and maybe even lose Starscream. A tug wasn’t cheap to run, but more than that, Mimir, Creet, smuggling for the greater good, it meant something. This shitty life, with these shitty people and their shitty fucked-up methods, I could justify it because every shipment meant another brick in the wall around Chitec. Without that, I was exactly what everyone thought of me—a washed-up fleet captain and a fixer for hire, as trapped as Jesse back on Ganymede.

  “Cale, for fuck’s sake. Talk to me.”

  “Get back to the house.”

  “You don’t believe them, right?” She laughed without a trace of humor. “I mean, c’mon, fleet? This has to be a joke.”

  “Yeah.” The joke is on me.

  “Maybe someone has an axe to grind. Bruno? Could he have set this up?”

  “I’ll join you at the house soon.” Bruno was a possibility. He knew how to hit me where it hurt—in the credit. “We fly out in the morning.”

  She hovered behind me in silence and then finally walked back down the pier, the sound of her boots on the deck fading into the night.

  After shrugging on my jacket, I crouched beside Fran. She was breathing softly. Asleep, she could almost pass for innocent. No snarl, no snark, just fine features, soft lips, and dark lashes. A lock of her hair had fallen over her cheek. I tucked it behind her ear and brushed the backs of my fingers down her face.

  On the floor, beside the couch, lay an injector cylinder. She’d jacked herself up, probably right after getting back from the pier. She’d be out for hours. Her method of forgetting was different from mine, but we each had our reasons. Was hers because she was fleet? Fleet didn’t usually stoop to planting spies, unless Chitec had paid them to. I’d stayed off the grid for a long time after getting out of Asgard and thought I’d slipped their attention. Had I been wrong? The thought I might have had fleet right alongside me this whole time twisted my guts into knots. I’d checked her out. Her past was clean, maybe too clean.

  If Fran did work for fleet or Chitec, why hadn’t they hauled me back to Asgard? It’s not like they didn’t have more than enough evidence to put me away. The only thing Fran hadn’t known was the origin of my Fenrir Nine runs. She’d tried though, but that was Fran. She kept on digging, poking, prodding until her victim snapped or the information did.

  I had to let her go. She knew too much. She wouldn’t stop digging. She was a risk to my business, my operation, and if the allegations were true, she was probably a risk to my life. I needed a second I could trust, the way I’d trusted her.

  I straightened, took a final look at her peaceful face, and left the water home, keeping my head down and face hidden. I didn’t want to draw any more unnecessary attention. In less than half an hour, I’d be back-in-black and on the scrounge for work. I passed a guy heading down the deck, and considering the early hour, cast him a glance over my shoulder. He walked fast, head up as if he had somewhere to be while most of Mimir’s residents slept. I tried to get a good look at his face but the lantern light threw more shadows than illumination. He checked around him then veered off toward the hut I’d just left. I turned on my heels and jogged quietly back. Sure enough, our hut’s door hung ajar. I wouldn’t have put it past Fran to order some male takeout, but given the surprises of the last few days, I wasn’t walking away without taking a look. Fran could look after herself, when she wasn’t high.

  I gave the door a gentle shove, slipped inside, and listened for voices. Nothing but trickling water. I reached the door into the main room and saw him hunched over Fran, holding a cushion over her face. That cold, empty part of me engaged. I hooked an arm around his throat, hauling him off her. He thrust an elbow back into my gut, instantly winding me, then swung wide with a lousy left hook. His knuckles glanced off my jaw enough to briefly distract me, but I blocked the incoming right hook. I’d have had him on his knees if my wounded shoulder hadn’t decided that that moment was as good as any to spasm and spill pain down my arm. My arm buckled, and this time, his right hook connected hard with my face. Instead of crumpling, I grabbed him and dragged him down with me. Close and personal—his snarling face in mine—I recognized him as Fran’s paying customer; the bounty hunter I’d handed over to Bruno on Ganymede.

  I jerked my head forward, cracked my skull against his already bruised nose, and we both went sprawling together. He grunted, cursed, and growled, scrabbling for the inside of his coat. I got there first, ripped the pistol free, and jammed it under his chin.

  “Bruno send you?
” I spat blood off to the side and worked my jaw around a dull, radiating ache.

  “I ain’t telling you shit.” Blood streamed from his nose and sprayed off his lips as he spoke.

  I closed my hand around his throat, shoved him down, straddled his chest, and leaned into the gun.

  “You think I care if you live or die? You just tried to kill my second. I’m gonna pull the trigger and dump your body in the Mimir sea. Shit like you sinks here.” I tightened my hold and smiled. His face reddened and his eyes bulged. “Tell me.”

  He nodded vigorously. Bruno. Fuck. I clambered off him but kept the gun aimed at his gut as he staggered to his feet.

  “Bruno said to take the bitch out.” He hawked and spat.

  A glance at Fran told me she was still sleeping, none the wiser thanks to the drug in her veins. If I’d left a few minutes earlier, or if I’d kept on walking, he’d have killed her in her sleep. I might not trust her, but I couldn’t let her die because I’d pissed off Ganymede’s criminal lynchpin.

  “He pay you already?”

  “After it’s done.” He wiped at his nose and flicked the blood from his fingers.

  “What about the synth? You were after her too. What were you gonna do, trade her off?”

  The bounty hunter chuckled then spat blood and phlegm. “No, man. I heard a rumor about her, that she’s special. I was gonna go straight to the top of Chitec, to Hung himself.”

  “What? Why the fuck would he care about a rogue synthetic?”

  “Hung wanted her back. Made it pretty damn clear with all the credit he was offering. Rumors said he made an extra synth. Broke all the rules. You ain’t stupid, Shepperd. Figure it out.”

  Hung had gone against his own company, his entire empire, to create one extra synth. My brother had warned me. Chen Hung would risk exposing the underbelly of his business for only one reason—his daughter who’d died.

  “He wouldn’t …” Guilt made people do crazy things; I should know.

  The hunter shrugged. “Whatever you say. You knew him, right? Caleb Shepperd, First Class Fleet Asshole, fuckin’ Chitec’s cunt of a daughter.”

  I swallowed. “He wouldn’t, because he was the one who killed her.”

  I switched my aim from his gut to his head and fired a phase bullet right between his eyes. He dropped like the sack of shit that he was.

  With the threat gone, I fell into the chair and pressed my trembling hands against my face. The synth couldn’t be Haley. The ever-after project didn’t work; it never had. It was all spin and polished PR to keep the money flowing. Those fuckin’ synths, all one thousand of them, were machines programmed to respond to personal information. The program was a con on a grand scale. Chitec didn’t create life-ever-after; they were creating a goddamn army. I’d seen it, and so had Haley. She’d died for her father’s fuckin’ secret, and I’d watched him kill her. Hung couldn’t have brought her back. It wasn’t possible, because if it were true, if #1001 was Haley, she’d remember what I’d done to her. She’d remember everything. And I’d be a dead man.

  Chapter Twenty Three: #1001

  I tucked the stinger shuttle, named Rosalie, up against the spilled guts of the wrecked freighter, just as I’d seen Fran do a few days ago. The little vessel had two sections: cockpit and cabin. Jesse and I had pulled down the bunks and laid the commander out. She’d monitored him while I’d flown the shuttle out of Ganymede. We’d escaped via one of the smaller docks. Once behind the controls, I’d discovered I not only had the knowledge to fly a stinger class shuttle, but I liked it. A tingling thrill brought a smile to my lips as we blasted away from Ganymede and took to the black as though I were exactly where I belonged.

  “How long will we be here?” Jesse asked, awkwardly seating herself into the flight chair beside mine.

  I’d powered down the shuttle’s non-essential systems and was keeping an eye on the overview. “Until I’m sure we haven’t been followed.”

  She leaned back in the seat with a heavy sigh. “I thought I’d never escape him.”

  I knew that feeling and then wondered how I could know it. “You should rest. We have limited medical supplies and your heart rate is elevated, along with your body temperature.”

  She looked at me sideways. “You’re one of those synthetic humans—I mean of course you are—but I thought you’d be different. You seem to care.”

  “I am different. I believe that’s the problem.”

  The flight of internal systems errors peppering my vision had calmed down. I’d worked at resetting various protocols—the ones I had access to—so I could at least function, but something was very wrong with me. I should be returning to Janus, to Chitec and Doctor Grossman; I was programmed to. But apparently, my programming had become something of a suggestion and less of an order.

  “What number are you?” Jesse asked. We’d settled into the quiet of the cockpit together. She seemed to like the quiet.

  “One thousand and one.”

  She scanned the flight controls with mild interest. “Why are you doing this? Any of this?”

  I didn’t know the answer. My orders didn’t matter anymore. So what exactly was I doing? “Why does a synthetic do anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it. I thought they just sort of came back and returned to their old lives? That’s what the rich people pay for, right?”

  I settled my gaze outside the observation window, on the twisted guts of the freighter. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Life ever after,” Jesse whispered.

  I knew what my files told me, that only the most influential people could afford to buy into the program and that after they came back from death, they returned to their families in new bodies, with their old memories intact. But what I knew didn’t seem to have all the answers. I also knew I followed orders, until I didn’t.

  “Were you a woman once?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I think I was, or something inside of me was … once.”

  “Do you remember?” she asked softly.

  In the quiet of the cockpit, her voice and questions seemed intimate, as though with every question she exposed a part of me not meant to be revealed. Doctor Grossman had asked if I remembered. The correct answer was no, but it was a lie.

  “I knew Captain Shepperd, before.”

  “Before? You mean before you were a synth?” She sat up and turned the flight chair to face me. “That’s fascinating.” She stared in that way people enjoyed doing with me, as if they couldn’t help but look. “What do you remember?”

  “Fragments.” I didn’t want to recall them. During rest mode I had no choice. While awake, choice seemed to be all I had. It hurt to remember. “When I rest and filter through my data, they come. They don’t make sense. I get words, sensations. I don’t know how to process the data.”

  “You can’t process memories. Memories are like dreams. You just have to go with the flow.”

  Stars are wishes, and wishes are dreams. You can’t capture them … ever. I pushed the thought aside.

  “I’m synthetic. I don’t dream.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, you helped me and the commander. Thank you, One Thousand And One.”

  Peculiar warmth spread through me. Satisfaction perhaps? I nodded. “Get some rest while you can.”

  Jesse retreated to the rear of the shuttle and left me alone to consider my actions over the last few days.

  I had been sent to kill Shepperd, but when I’d first seen him in the cargo hold, something inside had broken. He’d been unarmed. The opportunity to kill him had been there. I’d struck out, but … the fault had stopped me. I could have killed him both times he’d been attacked on Ganymede, but I hadn’t. I knew how to kill. My internal data files overflowed with information pertaining to every aspect of human anatomy and where best to mortally wound. I knew how to pilot a shuttle. I knew the signs of a faulty reserve fuse on a tugship. I knew what it meant to look up at the stars and see wishes
. I knew things that synths didn’t need to know. Why?

  Alone in the cockpit, I lifted my hands and admired the fine lines crossing my palms. Fingers curled in, I imagined my hands being smaller, my nails painted with colorful acrylic art. I remembered walking through cornfields outside Vancouver, my hand closed in his; I looked up and the sun glinted behind Caleb, shadowing his face in darkness. I remembered the beach where we’d lain side by side, watching the massive freighters block out the starlit skies. He’d shown me how to cover the vessels with my finger, making them tiny and insignificant. I heard my laughter, bright and free.

  “One Thousand And One?”

  I blinked back into the now and looked up at the commander. “You should be resting.”

  “It’s been hours.” He lowered himself carefully into the flight chair. “Your face is wet.”

  I brushed the tears off and looked down at the wetness on my fingers. “I cry, but I don’t understand why.”

  “Crying is an external symptom of an internal problem.”

  I blinked and watched another tear fall and soak into my blood-covered overalls.

  The commander smiled when I met his gaze. He’d thrown a blanket around his shoulders. What I could see of the wrappings around his chest looked stable, with no bleed-through. He’d heal quickly so long as he didn’t overexert himself.

  “I’m glad to see you’re looking well,” I said.

  “You really are, aren’t you?” He laughed gently but winced and spent a few moments breathing carefully. “Jesse tells me we have you to thank for getting us off Ganymede. She also says you killed fleet soldiers in the process.”

  He wasn’t smiling now. “They would have killed me. I don’t care that they’re dead.”

  “What do you care about?”

  I unzipped my flight suit and shrugged out of the soiled upper half of the garment, peeling the commander’s dried blood away from my skin. Fran’s vest was ruined, but I kept it on. “I care about living.”