The Star-Keeper Imperative

by C N Samson

  Norland closed his eyes, reveling in the feel of her enfolding him. But when her arm began sliding up his chest and toward his neck, his eyes flew open as he experienced a strange sense of danger. A heartbeat later, there was a sudden pressure at his throat as Valicia put him in a chokehold.

  Norland’s training kicked in, and he flipped her over his shoulder. She landed in the aisle between the benches and tumbled away, coming to cower against the hatch to the cargo bay.

  He felt a pang of remorse as she held out her left arm in a placating gesture, but then he noticed her right hand hidden behind her. Again, training told him to expect a concealed weapon, most likely a knife.

  A profound disappointment swept over Norland like a freezing wind.

  “You know, Emlyn was too ambitious,” he said, his voice raw. “She would have sold me out, eventually. But you, I suppose I convinced myself that you were different.” Disappointment flashed into white-hot anger. “Now I know you’re the same. You’re all the damn same!” With a roar, he charged.

  Valicia sprang up, thrust out her right hand as she closed the distance between them. She held a knife, all right, and it was Emlyn’s blade.

  With practiced ease, Norland trapped her arm and punched her across the face. She dropped the knife as she crumpled to the floor. Norland retrieved the weapon and pounced on Valicia, straddled her on his knees.

  His left hand shot out, clamped around her throat. She batted at his arm, but he bore down with even more pressure.

  “Stop that,” he said, “and maybe I’ll let you have some last words.”

  Valicia ceased struggling. He let up very slightly, held the knife before her eyes.

  “You took this off Emlyn, didn’t you? Why didn’t you use it before? Why wait until now?”

  “Be..cause...”

  Norland eased up a little more. “Because why?”

  Valicia spoke with great effort. “Because...it...wasn’t time.”

  Wasn’t time? Icy fingers of dread clutched Norland.

  “Sir! Sir!” Vance yelled over the comm. “Ships jumping in all around us! Boxing us in!”

  Ships. Lord fercocking damn.

  “They’re safe,” Valicia said with a pained smile. “You lose.”

  A murderous rage detonated within Norland. With a bestial cry, he took the knife in both hands and plunged the blade into Valicia’s heart.

  A grotesque rasp passed her lips. Her body convulsed. Norland roughly withdrew the knife and threw it aside, taking grim satisfaction as blood began to soak her shirt. He watched her face, wanting to witness the moment the light left her eyes.

  Valicia’s lips moved, forming words too soft to hear. Curious, Norland bent close, turned an ear to her mouth.

  “Not...the way...should happen,” Valicia breathed. “Can still...work.”

  Norland turned to look straight at her. It sounded as if she was speaking to someone else. “What could work? What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  There was a blur of motion at the edge of his vision, and Valicia’s hands suddenly gripped the back of his head. She pulled him down with impossible strength, crushed his mouth against hers. A death reflex?

  Norland resisted, tried to push himself off, but to his shock she held on with frightening power.

  No! This is crazy! She should be dead, or at least—

  Something squirmed into his mouth. Valicia’s tongue? Horrified, Norland groped for the knife, but it lay out of reach.

  The thing in his mouth touched the back of his throat, made him gag. His stomach heaved. Revulsion flooded his mind, gave way to a storm of terror. Paralyzed now, he saw his reflection in Valicia’s eyes, black as a bottomless void. Then it was as if something tipped him into that void, and he fell like a stone, pieces of himself splintering off as he plummeted.

  All that he was began to dissolve.

  Dissipate.

  Decompose.

  Decay.

  Until...

  At last...

  There was...

  Nothing left.

  CHAPTER 45

  THREE DAYS LATER, RHEINBORNE hurried into the observation dome of the Nolvallis Mariner. Gwynne and Dr. Seldra were there, as well as Marlaina and Kassyrinx. The light of the blue-white star Nabalolti shone through the polarized hexagonal window panels.

  “Come on, you’re going to miss it!” Marlaina said, waving him over to her. She and the others stood at the port side of the dome, facing the star. The ship was in a wide orbit, as close as it could get without sustaining any damage.

  “Sorry, I had to catch up on my reading,” Rheinborne said.

  “So, you understand everything now?” Gwynne asked. “Are we good?”

  “We’re good,” Rheinborne replied. “But I can’t help wishing that Valicia had killed Norland, you know?”

  Dr. Selda put a finger to her lips. “Blake, shush! This is a sad moment for us.”

  Rheinborne apologized.

  Gwynne tapped his ear. “Five minutes, everyone,” he said.

  Dr. Seldra sniffed, dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her coat sleeve.

  As the minutes ticked down, Rheinborne’s mind wandered. He recalled that, shortly after the capture of the Skylight Dawn, exhaustion had overtaken him and he had blacked out. When next he awoke, it was one standard day later, and he was in the Mariner’s medbay. Dr. Seldra had kept him under mild sedation for the entire day while she restored him to full health.

  Upon learning that Valicia was dead, Rheinborne had rushed down to the cryo-bay, where her body lay in a cold-stasis pod. A crushing grief had engulfed him, and he had refused to leave her side. The appearance of Kassyrinx and Marlaina had convinced him to leave the cryo-bay and freshen himself up.

  Rheinborne had then secluded himself in one of the crew cabins, not knowing or caring what was happening outside. After some time, Kassyrinx stopped by and delivered a live-paper with Gwynne’s after-action report. The sidhreen said that the document would detail, among other things, why Gwynne seemingly abandoned him, how the Interstellar Transport Alliance had gotten involved, and how the artifact would be handled. Rheinborne had put the report aside, still brooding in the cabin, until Dr. Seldra visited and gave him the marriage token that Valicia had kept with her.

  “One minute,” Gwynne said, interrupting Rheinborne’s reverie.

  “I know it’s just a ship,” Dr. Selda said, her voice full of emotion, “but it’s like losing a home.”

  Rheinborne silently agreed. When she had informed him that the Adventurer would be destroyed by being piloted into a star, he had realized that Gwynne was setting his endgame into motion. Because the former DSI man was now a fugitive from the Treilath government, the Adventurer became a marked ship and would have to be scuttled. Rheinborne had then read the after-action report, finishing with just enough time to head to the dome and witness the end of Gwynne’s spacecraft.

  The voice of Captain Morse, commander of the Mariner, came over the ship’s general broadcast. “Undocking in three...two...one...Adventurer is free. Her voyage is ended.”

  The dark gray shape of the spacecraft came into view below them, its maneuvering thrusters firing. The vessel, being remotely operated by one of the bridge crew, curved toward the star. Gwynne snapped a salute as the ship accelerated away, its sublight engine coming to life.

  “Oh, I can’t look,” said Dr. Seldra. She covered her face with her hands. Gwynne put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Sad, indeed,” said Kassyrinx, his head crest flattening. “Just as well that the young Miss Two-Saints isn’t here to see this.”

  Marlaina sighed. “She’s got her uncle’s funeral, then her wedding. I think they’ll have to do it the other way around, though.”

  One of the dome’s panels lit up, displayed a magnified view of the Adventurer as it raced at full speed toward the star. The hull soon took on a red-orange glow, and pieces of the ship started to break off.

  A lump formed in Rheinborne’s throat as
more and more chunks of the spacecraft became molten metal and broke away. He had seen ships destroyed in combat, but a deliberate scuttling was something else.

  The dome’s panel flared white and blinked off. A bright spot appeared against the star, then faded out.

  “That was the reactor going critical,” said Gwynne. “She’s gone.”

  Dr. Seldra wiped her face. “Excuse me,” she said as she rapidly strode out of the dome.

  Rheinborne watched her go, then turned to the others and asked, “So what now?”

  Kassyrinx cheeped. “I had the notion to fly back to my homeworld, but I know that most of those flappers would find me a shade too...human.”

  “Not that it’s a bad thing,” Rheinborne said with a smirk. “What’ll you do instead?”

  “Mr. Gwynne made a proposal that I’ve unreservedly accepted,” Kassyrinx replied.

  “Actually, we both have,” said Marlaina.

  Rheinborne cast a questioning look at Gwynne, who said, “Yes indeed. They’ll both be working in some capacity at the headquarters of the ITA.”

  “Their headquarters?” Rheinborne repeated, wondering if he’d heard right. “You do know that it’s less than a thousand light-years from Treilath, don’t you? The center of the government, the military—”

  “Quite so,” Gwynne agreed. “But it’s the safest place for them to be, for the moment.”

  “Safest?” Rheinborne shook his head. “Just the opposite! If the government wants to take the artifact, they will.”

  “They’ll have to risk going to war with the Alliance, and that would be bad for all concerned. Trust me.”

  Madness, Rheinborne thought, but now wasn’t the time to argue the point.

  “He’s right,” said Marlaina. “The Arusia wants me for what I know about them, but they won’t dare touch me as long as I’m with the Alliance.”

  “And as for you, Mr. Rheinborne,” Gwynne said, “you are welcome to come with us.”

  “With who, where?” Rheinborne asked.

  Gwynne said that he and Dr. Seldra would be taking Valicia’s remains back to her parents. “I can’t tell you where they are, or how we’ll get there,” he continued, “but I guarantee you’ll know the full truth about Valicia by the time we arrive.”

  Rheinborne said nothing. This was something he had pondered throughout the mission, and the sight of her lifeless body in the pod had served to crystallize his feelings on the matter.

  “Can we go see her again?” he asked. “Just us two, I mean.”

  IN THE Mariner’s cryo-bay, the canopy of Valicia’s pod opened. Gwynne stood by the control console, while Rheinborne gazed down at her preserved form. Her hair had been washed and styled, the blood had been cleaned from her skin, and she was dressed in a fresh white utility uniform. It was easy to believe that she was simply in cryosleep and that she would soon awaken, ready for another mission.

  Rheinborne reached into his pocket, removed the marriage token. He tucked the disc into the front pocket of her uniform, then smoothed out the fabric. Taking a step back, he nodded to Gwynne, who tapped on the console. The pod’s canopy gradually lowered, locked into place.

  “No one should have more than one funeral,” Gwynne said.

  After a long moment of silence, the two men left the cryo-bay.

  Out in the corridor, Rheinborne said, “I’m not going with you.”

  “Why not?” Gwynne asked. “I thought you wanted full disclosure.”

  Rheinborne stuck his hands into his jacket pockets, started walking. “Everything you told me about her, all that I read, even what she said to me...I have a feeling that it’s all hiding something that I’d be better off not knowing. I think I’d prefer to remember her as she was, during the time we had together.”

  Gwynne lowered his eyes, made a show of examining his fingernails. Rheinborne waited for the man to speak.

  “That would be best, yes,” Gwynne said at length, looking up again. “But did she ever mention that the reason she came back was to see you again?”

  “She didn’t have to. I’d already figured so.”

  The two of them walked without speaking for several paces, then Gwynne said, “I can’t pay you as much as our contract stipulated, for obvious reasons. But there’s another option.”

  “Like what, accepting less?”

  “No. The option is to go with your friends.”

  “Join them at ITA HQ? Not a chance.”

  Gwynne halted, put a hand on Rheinborne’s arm to stop him. “You want to go out there, beyond the borders, beyond the fringe? The bounty for your retrieval will be substantial, and you’ll be fair game for anyone and everyone.”

  “I’d only be gone for as long as it takes to settle the artifact issue.”

  “It could take months, it could take years. Are you willing to run for that long?”

  Rheinborne brushed Gwynne’s hand away. “You’re worried about what I might say if I’m caught.”

  “Lord damn it, Blake, of course I’m worried about that!” Gwynne said, stepping up close to the other man. “And if they catch me, none of you will be safe.”

  “So why risk going to Valicia’s parents?”

  “I’ve been planning a long time for this day,” Gwynne answered. “We won’t be found. I can’t guarantee the same for you if you’re out there alone.”

  Rheinborne exhaled, pretended to see something interesting on the ceiling. Much as he hated to admit it, Gwynne was correct. Once the DSI pieced everything together, anyone even remotely connected with the artifact mission would be hunted down and questioned. He could hide out on forgotten worlds or lose himself in the galactic core; it wouldn’t matter. He would be found.

  “So then,” Rheinborne said, directing his focus back to Gwynne, “you’re saying I shouldn’t be alone?”

  “Not if you want to survive.”

  “Then that only leaves me one choice. And one question.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Would I get to command one of these big ships?”

  Gwynne laughed, slapped Rheinborne on the back. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. One thing at a time.”

  The two of them continued down the corridor until they came to a lift. They entered, the doors closed, then they were gone from sight.

  EPILOGUE

  A SPARK OF NORLAND’S consciousness flickered to life.

  He saw that he was sitting at a computer workstation, within a cone of light. Impenetrable darkness surrounded him.

  Norland tried to shout, to look around, but something compelled him to type at the keyboard. An undefinable presence loomed over him, prevented him from doing anything else.

  What was he typing? He concentrated on the words flowing across the screen.

  Oh, Great Lord! It was a confession, laying out everything he had done while inside the DSI. He willed his hands to stop, but the presence was in control.

  With supreme effort, he turned his head to the left and saw a faint reflection. Glass? A wall? Some sort of enclosure, it looked like.

  Within the enclosure, something moved. A rounded hump with a pebbled texture, reddish-orange in color. An animal?

  The presence took note of him now. His vision narrowed, faded, until all went black. The spark sputtered, died.

  Norland was no more.

  AFTER-ACTION REPORT

  THE FOLLOWING IS THE official after-action report for Operation Star-Keeper, as prepared for Blake Rheinborne.

  ■ WARNING: This document will expire 30 minutes after opening.

  ■ Duplication Disabled, Recipient’s Eyes Only.

  ■ Mission Goal: To locate and secure the Chythex “architecture manipulation field generator,” also known as “the artifact.”

  ■ Outcome: The artifact was recovered and secured.

  [SECTIONS 1-4 HIDDEN BY USER]

  5. OPERATIONAL DIVERGENCE. Shortly after the Adventurer set course for Maralto, the DSI support personnel who were loyal to Gwynne reported to him that an int
ernal investigation had been initiated into his handling of the artifact recovery effort. Knowing that this would lead to arrests and the compromise of the mission, Gwynne ordered his people to enact long-standing contingency plans for their exfiltration. It was also necessary for him to cease contact with Rheinborne and his party, for their protection.

  Valicia, still a prisoner on the Skyward, continued to feed reports on the plans and activities of Norland and Prester. She indicated that Norland’s infatuation with her could be turned into an advantage. Gwynne agreed that she should pursue this angle as she saw fit.

  6. INTERSTELLAR TRANSPORT ALLIANCE. With his support personnel gone into hiding and the government closing in, Gwynne was without resources. But he recalled that, in one of Valicia’s reports, Norland had made a claim that Gwynne planned to sell the artifact to a major transport company. Gwynne had no such intention, but the idea still had validity.

  Subsequently, Gwynne used his personal contacts to arrange and enter into urgent negotiations with the Interstellar Transport Alliance (ITA) [see Addendum A]. The end result was that the ITA agreed to provide a small fleet of ships (drawn from the various member companies) for the mission, in return for possession of the artifact.

  7. MARALTO. Aboard the Skyward, en route to Maralto, Norland proposed a plan to Valicia. If she agreed to marry him, Norland would free her, betray Prester and Briggston, and take ownership of the artifact. Valicia assented to the plan. Norland revealed that Prester intended to use a thought-cap on her, but that he would find a way to sabotage the device so she would remain unaffected. Further, Norland restored her ECM to limited functionality, so that only he could communicate with her.

  In Maralto orbit, Norland enacted his plan [see Addendum B], in which he ultimately destroyed the Skyward and escaped with Valicia in the shuttle Skylight Dawn (which had been outfitted with the artifact). The Highfire (with Norland’s crew and Briggston aboard) and the shuttle Tranquility Star (with Rheinborne and Kassyrinx aboard) also fled from the planet.