Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Eric gritted his teeth noticing the grins from those close enough to hear. He rolled his eyes at them and mouthed the word silently, “Bethanites!”

  The onlookers grinned wider, nodding in sympathy.

  Eric put on a smile and tuned toward the man again. “From Bethany’s World I assume?”

  “Why yes! How did you know?”

  This time the laughter was loud enough for the tourist—he must surely be one as he was dressed in flamboyant colours and ridiculous looking printed patterns—to notice. He looked around uncertainly, his smile slipping and Eric was suddenly tired of the pretence.

  He held out his hand for a shake. “I’m Eric, honoured to meet you. I recognise your scrupulous manner as being from Bethany. I visited there once.”

  “Ah, you are too kind, Eric. My name is Kenneth Hartley-Browne. Glad to make your acquaintance.”

  Eric clasped Ken’s hand.

  * * *

  >_ Connection request. Accept [Y]es/[N]o?

  >_ Y

  >_ Connection Achieved... Stone, Kenneth. Master Sergeant 501st Infantry Regiment, serial number DGN-896-410-339.

  >_ Incoming data packet... downloading.

  >_ Download complete.

  * * *

  Eric shook Ken’s hand and palmed the key card he held. “Sorry to leave in such haste, but my shuttle departs soon.”

  Ken smiled. “Quite all right. I must away to find my own transportation. Good bye to you.”

  “Good bye,” Eric said and watched one of his oldest friends walk away.

  Suddenly he couldn’t leave it like that. What if this was his last op? No one stayed lucky forever. Stone was already out of sight but that was no problem. He could have hacked into station comms easily enough, or used his built in comm. No one would have been the wiser. They didn’t know to monitor viper freqs, and if they had they would have received encrypted bursts of data that to them would have amounted to garbage or background noise. His tactical network was a quicker built in system dedicated to viper systems alone. Totally secure. He quickly accessed TacNet and contacted the only other viper in the entire Thurston system.

  “Ken... just wanted to say thanks. For everything,” he said silently, his words encoded by his processor and sent on their way.

  “No big, just another recon op.”

  Stone’s voice came to him as if his friend were standing a few feet away. He thought he was worried about the op, easy enough mistake. “It’s not that, Ken. It’s...” he couldn’t voice it. “It’s just...”

  “Are you okay, brother?” Stone said, sounding concerned now.

  Brother, yes, Stone was his brother in every way that mattered. His family—his birth family—were long dead and their descendants didn’t know him, but he still had brothers and sisters in the regiment. Everyone wearing the snakehead patch was family. He felt better remembering that; he wasn’t alone.

  “I’m coming back there,” Stone said.

  Eric cursed himself. He’d taken too long to answer. Stone’s blue icon, clearly visible on his sensors among so many green ones denoting the civs on the station, reversed course.

  “No, Ken. You have somewhere to be, yes?”

  “Tigris, but it can wait. You need me now.”

  “I’m okay, feeling my age I guess. I just didn’t want to let you go without saying it’s been an honour serving with you... in case, you know?”

  “Bro... I feel the same. Nothing is gonna happen to you; not now, not ten years from now. Besides, the General says we have an appointment in five to kick alien butt. You wouldn’t want to miss that, right?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Eric said grimly. He couldn’t kill enough Merkiaari in a thousand lifetimes to make up for what he and the rest of the Human race had lost. “Go, I’ll be fine. That’s an order if you need one.”

  “Nah. I knew you were fine. Stone out.”

  Eric watched Ken’s icon on his sensors. “God bless,” he whispered and turned his attention back to business as Stone headed for his ship’s dock.

  He had no idea what Ken’s mission on Tigris was; probably something along similar lines as here on Thurston. It had no bearing on his own mission that he could see. Ken was often tasked with information gathering missions. He would be sent out to find trouble spots and assess whether the regiment needed to get involved. If it did, he would report that and facilitate any follow up missions by providing intel, or weapons, or any number of other useful things.

  The download would have any data Eric needed to succeed in his own mission, and the key card was probably to access a cache of weapons or something interesting like that. No doubt there was trouble on Thurston somewhere. The authorities might not even know about it yet, but it would be there simmering and ready to boil over. He wouldn’t be here otherwise and Ken was like the proverbial trouble magnet. If there was something here, it would have come to Ken’s attention one way or another.

  Eric found a departing shuttle easily enough, but first there was customs and immigration to go through. Basic stuff out here in the Border Zone. Thurston wasn’t an Alliance member world and its citizens enjoyed a more liberal way of life. That was good and bad. Good when people played nice. No one liked too much government red tape and observation. Bad when people didn’t play nice and flouted laws designed to keep the peace and ensure everyone had a fair shake.

  Thurston used to have a dictatorial government based upon corporate ownership of resources. Such company owned planets were numerous enough out here in the zone not to raise too many eyebrows, but Thurston had moved beyond that now and was making a serious bid for Alliance membership. There were prerequisites for that. Democratic rule being only the first hurdle.

  “Identity please,” the trim looking woman wearing the blue uniform of a customs official said.

  “Eric Martell, here looking for work.”

  “Planet of origin?”

  “Alizon,” Eric lied. He had no fear that his fake identity would fail. His simcode implant, though the same as millions of others implanted at birth in the core worlds and an integral part of his spinal column, was special in one important detail. It was programmable. His processor had quite a few identities saved in its database. “Where’s your scanner?”

  The woman grimaced. “It’s on the fritz again. We’re still working the bugs out of the system; only had them six months.”

  And there went another of the liberal benefits of living outside the core worlds on its way out the airlock. Babies born on Thurston from now on would have the simcode implant fitted. It was one of the indicators that real core world type civilisation had reached here. Not everyone would be pleased by that. Fertile ground for the kinds of problems he was often sent to deal with.

  “So,” Eric nodded. “What next?”

  “Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’ll need a blood sample before an identity card can be issued.”

  Eric nodded. “That’s fine,” he said and let her walk him through the procedure.

  The old card system would be in place for decades to come. It would take that long for simcoded citizens to become the majority here. Until then, Thurston would have a hybrid system of DNA checks backed up with old style fingerprints and holographs.

  When she was finished he had a shiny new I.D card. He went through immigration and boarded the first available shuttle down world. He found a seat easily; the small fast little boat was barely half full. He didn’t bother stowing his duffel but secured it on the seat next to him with its safety belt. The cabin staff nodded at his precautions and didn’t say a word. Things were always more relaxed in the Border Zone, but shipboard safety wasn’t one of those things.

  With time on his hands, he decided to open Ken’s data and find out more about his mission. So far, all he knew was that he would be busting heads on Thurston. His missions always had that in common, and mostly involved him infiltrating somewhere to do it. Solo ops and escaping alive were his personal way of keeping score. After centuries of
fighting, there wasn’t much else to use. He wondered how Ken coped, because back in the day he had used Merkiaari kills for his personal scoreboard, but now? With the regiment mothballed, it wasn’t as if rank had any meaning to him or any viper.

  Eric grimaced, his thoughts heading toward a place he knew well; one he didn’t want to revisit. “Going through the motions. All of us... all is programming,” he murmured.

  “Sir?”

  Eric cursed himself. Dammit he was slipping. He hadn’t noticed the steward arrive, and he’d said it aloud! Dammit, he was acting like... he shuddered. He was acting like a classic whigout wannabe—a malfunctioning unit fit only for termination. No! He was fine. He was rock solid stable. He was!

  “I’m fine,” Eric said, making a guess the steward was offering refreshment. The steward nodded and made to move on. Eric stayed him a moment with a raised hand. “How long to undock?”

  “As the pilot said, sir, a few minutes more for traffic to clear our space.”

  Shit, he had missed the announcement too. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  Eric let the steward go and turned his attention inward again. He pulled up his diagnostics and ran a full scan. While that was running, he opened the download and forced himself to wait calmly for the scan to complete. He wasn’t a damn burnout; he was just distracted. It happened. Being enhanced didn’t make him less Human in that aspect at least.

  The mission was a snoop and scoot. The data provided plenty of background information for him. Interesting. The current president of Thurston was the son of the old one, who had been an unapologetic bastard of mega proportions, but strangely not in the people of Thurston’s eyes. He had limited his particular brand of vicious single-mindedness to political and business enemies, and allowed the citizens of Thurston quite a bit of freedom. Very clever of him really. They loved him for it, and never realised he was only letting them have what they were entitled to anyway. Of course, he was one of the founders of the company that owned most of the planet, and employed most of them in his mining operations. The planet was named for him!

  The current President, Martin James Thurston, was cut from different cloth. Educated on Earth he had brought true democracy to his home planet when his father died and he took over. Raised to the presidency by acclamation, he immediately set about undermining his own power by legislating a five-year term for the presidency, and throwing away his own lifetime position. At the same time, he instituted wide spread reforms that made the existing parliament more than just a tourist attraction and into what it was meant to be.

  His father must be spinning in his grave, Eric mused.

  Of course introducing a proper parliament with real powers and political parties meant Thurston was on course to join the Alliance—a stated goal of the current government. Such things as real democracy and political safeguards were required for membership, and it was that proposed membership that had sparked the need for Eric’s mission.

  As always, democracy had enemies. In Thurston’s case it had the so-called Freedom Movement to deal with.

  In his father’s time, such a terrorist group would never have flowered into a real problem. Dictatorships did have uses, and one of those was making troublemakers disappear. Eric had a lot of sympathy with that sort of thing. He preferred making such people vanish as well, but dictators never knew when to stop. Too many innocents tended to die needlessly, and that was something Eric did not approve of.

  According to Ken’s data, Thurston had requested aid from the Alliance to deal with the terrorists and it was granted. An Alliance Marine battalion commanded by a Major Stein had been landed to take care of business. They were not yet in position to take out the Freedom Movement in its entirety, but they had been in action a few times on a smaller scale.

  His mission then was to infiltrate the Freedom Movement and report to Major Stein with everything needed for the Marines to clean house. Thurston would then complete his intention of dragging his planet into the big leagues—full membership of the Alliance.

  * * *

  >_ Diagnostics: All systems are within acceptable parameters.

  >_ Unit fit for duty.

  * * *

  Eric had known he was fine but seeing it confirmed was good. He wiped the report from his internal display knowing the diagnostic would be logged and archived automatically.

  Eric closed his eyes as undocking commenced and gravity abruptly dropped away. The shuttle was a civilian vessel and too small for internal gravity fields, but it still had mass. Manoeuvring under thrust had an effect similar to gravity. Eric ignored the tug on his harness as the shuttle backed away from the station, and continued reading his brief.

  Travel time down to the port was less than an hour. The shuttle’s departure from the station was good timing as the pilot was able to descend without needing to orbit the planet first. He didn’t waste time or fuel, Eric noted, as the buffeting increased enough to be jarring. It was not on the same scale as a combat drop of course, but it was a speedier and more violent re-entry than the usual sedate ride one would expect. Eric had to wonder why.

  The other passengers were concerned and whispering questions that none had the answers to. He had no more information than they, but he could make better guesses based upon experience. Either there was some kind of emergency or the pilot had been given standing orders to land as fast as possible. With the threat posed by the Freedom Movement in mind, Eric would put money on the pilot having orders to push the envelope and land fast. He didn’t care either way; a quick descent worked in his favour.

  With wings glowing and fuselage darkening as its nanocoat battled to absorb the heat of re-entry, the shuttle bore into the atmosphere of Thurston toward a landing at the main spaceport just outside the capital.

  Thurston was a well-planned and developed example of a border world. Most had one or two cities sited conveniently in temperate zones of the available continental masses. Usually cobbled together to provide the basics, the cities would be sited close to something of interest usually a geological formation. Rare earth elements for example, needed in nanotech engineering, or heavy metals needed for use in power systems used in spacecraft. The housing in such cities had more in common with barracks built for mine and industrial workers, than the architectural marvels to be found in the core, but Thurston was different.

  Thurston had more than a dozen decent sized cities already. In the core they would be classed as large towns, but make no mistake, out here in the Border Zone they were cities. And they were spread out on each of the eight continents with plenty of space to grow. Each one had its own representatives in Thurston’s parliament, and all were modern with up to date services. Eric had never seen such a well thought out example of colonisation. Not even the most powerful giants of the Alliance such as Alizon or Garnet had been given such a good start.

  Thurston had potential, Eric mused. Serious potential and the General had foreseen it. In a century or less, Thurston would be a power in the Alliance and its location within the current confines of the Border Zone made it a prime candidate as a future sector command node for the navy. Eric pursed his lips imagining it. Like the Kalmar Union, Thurston could become the centre of its own political entity within the Alliance. Whether it would or not, a Fleet base located here was a given, maybe one with full scale yard facilities and those were rare. Thurston did have excellent resources in the form of two large asteroid fields to feed a yard’s smelters. It even had four gas giants for fuelling refineries. It was bloody perfect...

  If.

  If things could be managed and guided in the right direction. It would take decades, a century even, but the General had centuries and the vision to guide the Alliance down the correct path... his path. Eric shuddered. Burgton scared him sometimes. If Eric hadn’t known him so well, if he didn’t know that Burgton’s every waking and sleeping moment was dedicated to the good of the Alliance and the Human race, he would have shot him in the head when next they
met. But he did know him, and he would continue to obey him as would the rest of the regiment no matter what was asked of them, because they did know, all of them, that Burgton was always right. Scary right. So when he said there would be another Merki incursion within five years, they knew it would happen and that the Alliance needed to be prepared for it, even if it didn’t know it was being prepared. Missions like this one, and others Eric knew nothing about, were all part of it.

  Eric skimmed the data Ken had put together picking out interesting facts and figures. The planet was firmly in the grip of global warming he noted, but it was a natural occurrence. The geological survey commissioned before colonisation placed Thurston in its cretaceous period. Every square meter of land was covered by steaming jungle. There were mountains visible from orbit and the cones of extinct volcanoes rose out of the vegetation like the bones of some great beast, but everything else was either water covered or teeming with native life. There were no ice caps and as a result sea levels were high. No deserts either. Thurston had eight continents. If he included the small island chains in his calculation, land equated to more than fifty percent of the surface area, and Thurston was not a small planet. It was twelve percent larger than Earth for example, and populated by Thurston’s unique brand of wildlife.

  “More dinosaurs,” Eric grumbled. “Really? What the hell is it about the lizards that they evolved on every bloody planet we like?”

  He was no scientist gleefully labelling the wildlife, but the few pictures Ken had included looked like dinosaurs to him. Big buggers some of them, and although a lot were vegetarian living off the vast jungle canopy, some were carnivorous.

  Eric studied one of the meat eaters and compared it to other critters he had seen over the last two hundred years. It looked like a mutant crocodile—huge jaw full of ripping teeth, no molars that he could see. Long narrow body with a ridge of horned spikes along the spine for protection, and stood twice a man’s height on four feet each having four clawed toes. The front legs each had a long curved spur, probably a vestigial toe, but what did he know?