Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  “I think I can manage that.” Caelyn tapped Seth’s interface node to sever their khamal and so his link to Khoe. “Let’s hope no one wants to come aboard. Your sloppy housekeeping won’t convince anyone that a Delphian owns that ship.”

  “Step easy around those soldiers. Try to keep a straight face.”

  Caelyn rolled his eyes and strode away to find a shuttle heading for the flight pads.

  Seth turned the other way to stroll through increasingly shabby streets that continued to fascinate Khoe. He observed her expression as surreptitiously as he could, amazed by her unending willingness to be amazed by all she saw. She took in everything, judged nothing, and learned more than he could ever hope to remember.

  “How do you find your way through this place without a mapper. It’s a maze!” Khoe said when they turned down yet another alley. The shops crowded so tightly in the small space that their multi-colored awnings formed a roof over the street.

  “I grew up here. I used to think that stall over there was the best one to steal cakes from until I realized that Lubetke and his wife looked the other way on purpose. They used to feed us like gutter birds.” He smiled at the memory. “A nice change from getting beaten by some of the other merchants when we weren’t quick enough.”

  Khoe peered into the stall where a young woman was tending a round hearth. The sweet smell of roasted sugar hung thick in the air.

  “That’s their granddaughter, I think,” Seth said.

  “Was it hard, growing up in a place like this? Having to steal food?” Khoe watched a couple of urchins slink past them. Seth’s hand automatically moved to protect his gun from nimble fingers.

  “Not for me. I lived up in the hills.” He gestured to the north where the wealthier population lived high above the noise and smells of the harbor town. “I only hung around down here because that place was really very boring. Unfortunately, that eventually got me sent to the military academy on Magra Alaric.”

  “Where you became a pilot. And a soldier.”

  “Yes, I am a pilot,” he said and then pointed to the end of the alley. “There we are.”

  The building he sought faced an open square populated mostly by eateries and taverns and the customers that frequented them. The rough slab of stonework made no attempt to look like anything but a jail. Khoe read the signage near the entrance, her brow furrowed. “Are you sure this is a good place for you?”

  “The safest,” he said. “Keep your eyes open.”

  “That’s only possible if you keep yours open.” She shifted more of her focus to his scanners.

  The clammy interior smelled of mildew and harsh cleaning chemicals. That, along with some rough cursing and shouts from other parts of the building, reminded him of past visits to places like these. Two guards, identically dressed in lightly armored chest guard over knee-length kaftan, sat near the door, chatting. They rose when Seth entered, their hands close to their weapons.

  “Morning,” Seth said lazily, using Union mainvoice.

  The two, both native to Magra, waited silently for more than that.

  “I’m here to see Master Faran. With Domeo’s report from Aikhor.”

  The two exchanged glances and then one nodded to the other, who left the entranceway. Identified by his code words, Seth was waved through an open arch guarded by an electrified curtain of snag filaments. Khoe snorted with derision at such elementary fortification but Seth’s respect for the barrier came through hard-earned experience. He waited patiently for the guard to disarm it and followed him into the interior and what seemed to be an administrative area. It smelled a little less like a prison here.

  Once again using Seth’s transmitters, Khoe tapped into the security system while he was made to wait for the guard to announce his arrival. She had no need to hurry; Master Faran measured his time carefully to ensure that everyone appreciated his importance.

  “Only locals locked up here,” she reported. “Thieves, mostly. A murderer.” She dug a little deeper. “Awful lot of weapons being kept in a cellar. More than they need, even if everyone carried two of them.”

  “I know. They pay well for them, too.”

  “Extra income for you? Baroch didn’t pay much?”

  Seth sent a mental shrug. “Any idea how much a tube of coolant costs?”

  “Of course I do.”

  The door finally opened and a Magran, also in embroidered robe and wearing a crossed weapons belt, stuck his head out to wave Seth inside the room.

  “Camera facing this way,” Khoe said. “What’s that thing on his head?”

  Seth walked ahead of the Magran and turned his back to the surveillance system. The lawman’s heavy brow ridge and most of his sparsely-tufted scalp was covered with a painful-looking reddish scale. He’s a northerner. They end up with skin problems down here. That’s a fungus, I’m guessing.

  “Let me see.”

  No, they don’t smell so good, either.

  “Really? Move closer.”

  No! Seth grimaced, wishing for the Delphians’ knack for obscuring their reactions to things like this. “Master Faran, thank you for the audience.”

  “Leave the crap at the door, Kada.” The Magran didn’t pronounce his words so much as roll them around in his throat for a while and even Seth had to pay close attention to understand his accent. “You’re not expected. Got anything for me?”

  “No, unfortunately. Hoping you have something for me. Looking for some fast cash, actually.”

  The Magran pursed his fleshy lips. “Got a shipment of guns looking for transport out of Aikhor.”

  “Need something bigger than that. What’s the deal out on Rishabel? Heard rebels are taking on extra crews.”

  Faran shook his head. “You don’t want to get mixed up with that lot. Whatever they’re smuggling is red hot. Dead people dropping into real-space and now Air Command is nosing around. Sent some sort of investigation to see what’s going on by the jumpsite. They might block it altogether.”

  “For everyone’s safety, of course,” Seth added.

  “That’s the story. Shri-Lan shifted the drop to Belene-Noh. If you’re interested I can send my regards. Personally, I wouldn’t touch it.”

  “The Shri-Lan’s running this?”

  “Yeah. Hiring private charthumpers to run errands. The goods go from there to who knows where. Not a lot of volunteers, from what I hear. You need a spanner to get to Belene, though. No open jumpsites going out that way.”

  “Good. Got me a crew,” Seth said, looking past Faran at Khoe who was busily poking around the Magran’s own data system.

  “Business must be good if you can afford a spanner.”

  Seth shrugged. “Can always be better. Who do I see?”

  “Put down near a charming place called Dead End. Pretty much the only settlement on the whole damn planet. There’s a hangout there run by a Centauri named Tieko. He’ll set you up. Don’t drink the water.”

  In the years that Seth had plied his admittedly questionable trade among the far-flung worlds of Trans-Targon, he had never had reason to land on Belene-Noh. From what he had learned about it over time, most other people didn’t either. It orbited its star at an uncomfortable distance but stubbornly insisted on putting forth scrubby life forms wherever the meager desert soil allowed. Without an indigenous sentient population, small but fiercely hostile wildlife thrived in endless battles for survival in the cold desert. Long ago a migrant ship crash-landed here after a disastrous subspace traverse, spilling its contents from a massive hull beyond repair. The surviving passengers, mostly Centauri settlers, made the most of a bad situation and clung to life until the first explorers arrived nearly forty years later.

  Those who escaped Belene-Noh were soon replaced by others seeking any place with sufficient oxygen and gravity to settle far from the watchful eyes of the expanding Commonwealth and its military.

  “I can only assume that your rebel friends have lotteries of some sort to decide on which of the most miserable wi
ldernesses to settle,” Caelyn commented during their approach. The Delphian slouched tiredly in his pilot bench, only marginally interested in whatever was going on down there. Any jump through an uncharted breach took its toll on navigator as well as machinery and even the Delphians, most suited for the task, required time to recover. At any other time, he would already be filling up Seth’s data bank with whatever the Dutchman’s scanners found down there.

  Seth switched the main screen to show a real-vid view of their destination. No town had ever been built on this planet. Instead, the ancient hulk of the crashed transport lay half-buried in the sand and rock, surrounded by a few decrepit outbuildings made of stone and salvage. Long fissures in the surface showed entrances to the below-ground caverns where most of the locals eked out a living. Smoke rose from a few of the gaps. “Not a lot going on down there,” he said.

  Indeed, only two cruiser-class ships parked near the wreck. They had detected a third leaving the planet but it vanished into the nearby keyhole before he was able to identify it. The Dutchman’s sensors reported perhaps two hundred people inside the hull and below ground; hardly a sustainable population. Like so many isolated colonies, this one had simply dissolved after much hardship and now only rebels, recluses and fugitives sought shelter here.

  Seth came about for a landing near the other ships parked on relatively level ground. “Finding anything?” he asked Khoe.

  She shook her head. As soon as Caelyn had completed the jump to this sub-sector she announced that the trigger entity they searched for was not here. They had expected this – likely, this outpost was merely a trading point to gather the disks for the trip to their final destination. Still, Khoe was disappointed when she perceived none of her kind out here.

  “Get some sleep,” Seth said to Caelyn. “We’ll take a look around.”

  Caelyn disengaged his link to the ship and heaved himself out of his bench. He looked strangely alien with his hair temporarily dyed black and hanging loose over his shoulders. The Centauri disguise would work reasonably well at a distance; it wasn’t likely that anyone out here had ever seen a Delphian up close.

  Khoe watched him leave for the crew cabin. “Should just let me jump,” she said. “He’s exhausted.”

  Seth nodded, concentrating on the landing. “You’ll take the next one. I might need him on his feet.”

  Once the Dutchman had settled on the planet’s surface, Khoe followed Seth into the ship’s small cargo bay. “You’ll want your heavy boots,” she advised. “They have a pretty aggressive sort of land crab here.”

  “Yes, dear.” He ran his hand longingly over the well-designed protective suit folded in its bin and then chose a rough desert robe instead. There was probably little point to looking like a dandy on this remote outpost and being robbed for it wasn’t going to help his mission here. When he turned he saw that she, too, had added a similar outfit to herself. “The Delphian wants to be a spy and the Dyad wants to be a person. What a strange crew I’ve taken on.”

  She frowned. “You don’t think I’m a person?”

  He sighed, regretting his offhand remark. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Just that you don’t need clothes at all.”

  “You’re the one that made me wear them. So now I like them.”

  He grinned. “You’re not just a person. You’re a girl.”

  “Thank you,” she said haughtily.

  Seth fastened his boots and then chose a set of weapons, taking his time to make sure of their suitability for Belene’s environment. He had been glad for Caelyn’s presence aboard his ship during the days it took them to reach this planet. The Delphian’s intellect and Khoe’s capacity for combining pure data with an almost Human emotional range made for some energetic conversations. But he was also relieved to not have to grapple with that sweet moment at the Delphian research station which left him feeling a little awkward in Khoe’s undeniably real presence.

  Since she came aboard he, like most males of his species and many others, had taken the opportunity to cop an occasional look at her enticing curves. There had been little more to this than entertainment value. Now he wasn’t so sure. Her physical appeal was undeniable and, considering her proximity, unavoidable. But she also had the intelligence and honesty he valued in any woman he had ever known for more than one night. As unpredictable and even eccentric as she was, he found himself drawn to her in ways he did not care to examine.

  “What?”

  He blinked, having been caught staring, and got busy holstering his guns. “Still no shoes?”

  She followed his eyes downward. “I cannot make any sense at all of what sort of shoes are worn with what clothes. Doesn’t matter; I don’t see my feet very often.”

  They exited the ship, making sure to extend the Dutchman’s proximity alarm to his data sleeve. Even set to its loudest internal alert, it might not be enough to wake the Delphian, whose people found sleep in the deepest of khamals, another of their distinct states of consciousness, from which they were not easily roused.

  He strolled past the other two cruisers parked out here, seeing nothing to identify them as anything but private ships; capable but hardly military grade. Khoe also found no indication of Air Command presence here, nor any unusual armament or electronic systems that would seem out of place in this isolated location. The single communications array was little more than a wind-battered antenna on a distant rise.

  Night was approaching fast across the plains and the cold gusts soughing over the flat landscape soon made their way through the folds of his robe. He was glad when he ducked into the sheltered entrance of the one-time transport ship and found it pleasantly heated. This interior resembled a cave of decaying metal and warped plastics, perhaps once a cargo entrance, where a few people waited for the stranger in silence.

  Seth directed a sunny smile of greeting at the most surly-looking of the locals. He counted three Centauri, a Human and a Feydan, both male and female and dressed in layers of clothes that ceased to be clean or fashionable a long time ago.

  “The tall man in the back is holding a charged weapon,” Khoe reported. “Rail gun.”

  “Hello,” Seth said, looking at the Centauri she had pointed out. “I don’t suppose you get a lot of visitors around here.”

  “Not until recently,” a Feydan woman said. “Who sent you?”

  “Master Faran on Magra Torley. Said this was a place to find a new commission. I’m looking for Tieko.” He handed her a marker given to him by Faran.

  She scanned the marker. The lines tattooed into the deep brown skin of her neck hinted that she belonged to a prominent family of a wealthy part of Feyd. He wondered what had led her to join the Shri-Lan. “He’s down below. I’ll take you,” she said. Some of the others seemed to have lost interest and disappeared into the gloomy shadows of the hold.

  Seth followed her back outside and around the wreck’s repurposed cargo modules into which, over time, windows and doors had been cut to serve as habitats for those fortunate enough to claim them. They walked a short distance across an open space to the edge of a fissure. No attempt had been made to ensure someone wouldn’t simply tumble into the opening. The Feydan led him to a crude ladder leaning against the edge of the crevice.

  Once he negotiated the creaking scaffold, he saw that the bottom of the gap split into many directions, separated by paper-thin walls of delicate, chalk-like material. It seemed that just touching them would bring one of these partitions down upon them. The walls and the floor were coated in pale dust, much like the surface above.

  They walked past alcoves set aside for sleeping or privacy, cisterns, storage areas, communal spaces where small fires burned, and the entrances of several darkened tunnels. As primitive as it seemed, the people here seemed comfortable and he heard calm voices and laughter. Two children ran across their path, giggling as they went.

  “He’s over there,” the Feydan finally said and immediately left him to make his own introductions.

  “A
re these all rebels?” Khoe asked.

  Mostly, I guess.

  “They don’t look very fierce. I thought rebels were dangerous and angry.”

  They are. But rebels have families, too. Seth approached a huddle of thickly-robed individuals seated around a fire. Here he saw clothing and weapons of more recent vintage on visitors from Pelion, Aikhor and Magra.

  Deferentially, he went through the steps of identifying himself and his quest to find a new patron among them. A bearded Centauri gestured for him to sit with them.

  “I’m Tieko,” he said. “Faran’s word is good enough for me. If he sent you, he must have reason.”

  Seth shrugged. “He has some concerns about all this.”

  Tieko chuckled. “Aye, but the money is good. Shri-Lan pays when due and they don’t get pissy about it. At least if you make it back here.”

  “Fill me in.” Seth accepted a cup from someone passing out drinks.

  “What’s that?” Khoe asked.

  Kind of busy here, he replied but then relented and sniffed the offering. Whatever it is, it’s horribly fermented.

  “Try it!”

  Not likely. Never had much interest in drink. Can you direct your maddening curiosity to that man’s data system, please?

  Tieko quaffed his drink with considerable enthusiasm. “Some experiment going on that the Commonwealth isn’t to know about,” he explained. “Shri-Lan is equipping pilots with a collector to take through subspace. That’s all I know, really. Didn’t think there was anything worth collecting in there.”

  “You have those devices?”

  “No. We’re waiting for someone to get here with them. Sounds like an easy job to me, but there’ve been accidents.”

  Seth shrugged. “There are always accidents. I’ve got a solid ship and a good navigator.”

  “That’ll do it,” Tieko said agreeably. “If you pass the muster, you’re in.”

  “What muster?”

  “Faran’s endorsement is a good thing, but they’ll want to know who you are. You’d better check out or your ship is going to be their ship before the end of tomorrow.” He turned away to talk to another one of his compatriots.