A Planet Too Far: Beyond the Stars, #1

by Nick Webb

  Is locating not a species of hunting?

  The mocking voice echoing in her head would be disconcerting enough were it simply her own subconscious needling her. With the Grom, though, who could really be sure it wasn’t something else? Something… other?

  The thought made her skin crawl. Fixing her lips and narrowing her mind’s eye, she fired off a salvo of what she could only assume was focused psionic thought-speak.

  You should be resting, Grom, so I will say this only once in the most polite tone I know how: Get. Out. Of. My. Head.

  Xenecia waited one, two, three beats before nodding firmly. There. Apparently that had set the busybody‌—‌busybrain?‌—‌straight. The inner workings of her mindscape were for her and her alone.

  Probably the Grom was having a good laugh at her expense right now, but at least she had made her position clear. With that settled, she turned her focus back to the matter at hand. Her own familiarity with the station informed her that the middle decks received the most foot traffic. If there was a better place for an ambitious young healer to hang their proverbial shingle, she couldn’t think of one.

  It was worth a shot, she decided. She had precious little else to go on and knew the middle decks better than most others. Hell, at least if the mystery man died she wouldn’t have a long walk back to her rack before the station went all catastrophic on her and everyone else.

  Somehow that last thought was more reassuring than it had any right to be. That settled that, then. Off she went.

  She wrote off her first stop almost immediately. Too busy. The victims of a nearby chophouse fire had descended upon the clinic’s doorstep, their burns and shortness of breath demanding the harried attentions of what passed for its staff. One possibility had been shuttered with no explanation, while another was rendered moot by the death of its proprietor days earlier. She heard rumors of a daycare center operating as a front for certain back room procedures, but that proved as erroneous as it sounded at first blush. Still, no stone left unturned and all that.

  After nearly an hour of fruitless searching Xenecia was beginning to suspect her methodology was flawed, at least so far as doctor shopping was concerned. One more, she resolved as she approached the clinic ahead of her, and then she was changing tack.

  Xenecia was so busy convincing herself she was on the wrong trail that she very nearly overlooked the evidence suggesting otherwise. This particular clinic was wedged catty-corner into an irregular space between a fish fry stand‌—‌most of which was hardly catch-of-the-day material by the time it came up from either surface‌—‌and a beauty parlor fronting for a numbers racket. And while its location couldn’t have been great for word of mouth, she was fairly certain the hand-lettered CLOSED sign hanging awkwardly in the window was out of character even for an outfit as sketchy as this one. And was that a smear of blood retreating from the sign’s edge?

  Xenecia frowned as she drew the mare’s leg from the stubby leather scabbard over her shoulder. Say what you will about the Grom, the kooky old seer knew her shit.

  * * *

  The clinic’s door resisted her initial attempt at entry. Opting for force over finesse in the face of looming catastrophe, Xenecia positioned her carbine above the knob. A quick slam of the mare’s leg’s molded stock cured the door of its intransigence, so much so that it flung itself wide in invitation to her. Now that was more like it, thank you very much.

  Xenecia was all of a foot over the threshold when the sounds of a struggle coming from the back found her ears. Letting the mare’s leg lead the way, she followed through the cramped lobby and down a short hall terminating at the clinic’s lone exam room. Two men were grappling on a table in the center when she entered. One of the men stood over the other and wore a lab coat that, even from the back, had obviously seen better days; the other was flat on his back and struggling, making some sort of desperate gurgling noise. From Xenecia’s vantage point it looked as if doctor and patient were choking the life out of one another. The doctor appeared to have the upper hand, as it were, though not for lack of trying on the part of his patient.

  “Take your hands off that man at once,” Xenecia demanded, taking aim.

  The doctor either didn’t hear her or didn’t care, still bearing down on his patient with seemingly lethal intent.

  “Ahem. I said‌—‌”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but I am trying to save this man’s life!”

  “As am I, doctor.”

  “By interrupting a delicate procedure?”

  “The situation is… complicated.”

  “Well mine is not,” the doctor said, still fighting with his patient. “This man is in neural arrest. Do you understand that? Shoot me and he’s as good as dead, guaranteed.”

  “Do not let that happen,” a new voice chimed in from behind. “And you! Drop the carbine or I drop you!”

  Too late, Xenecia remembered her unprotected backside. She spun on her heel at the sound of the woman’s voice, trying to correct for the lapse, but even her well honed reflexes were not enough to balance the scales. The woman had the drop on her but good. Any which way she ran the numbers, she wound up swimming in a column of red. Bad way to go out. With an obliging nod, Xenecia knelt and lowered her mare’s leg to the glossy tile.

  “Good. Now, step back.”

  The room didn’t allow for much in the way of backpedaling, but somehow Xenecia managed. Staring down the business end of a high-powered pistol proved a great motivator in that regard.

  “What now?” she wondered.

  “I could use an extra pair of hands if one of you isn’t too busy holding the other hostage!” the doctor pleaded in answer.

  The woman spared the briefest of glances at the doctor. Xenecia used that moment to take her measure. Human. Mid-to-late twenties, roughly 175 centimeters, 50 kilos or so. Hair: buzzed on the sides and back beneath a slick jet black sweep. Eyes: focused, steely, pissed. Narrow face, pointed chin, angry little mouth. All sharp edges, much like Xenecia herself. Probably Arathian military, if she had to guess.

  What she was doing operating in the demilitarized zone, now that was the far more interesting question…

  Sensing no threat in the doctor’s request, Angry Mouth flicked her pointed chin toward the exam table. “You heard the man. Lend him your hands, won’t you?”

  That quickly, Xenecia went from huntrex to nursemaid. Swords to ploughshares. Now there was a narrative she never imagined living long enough to claim for her own. Though if she could get her hands on something sharp and throwable, say, a scalpel…

  “And no funny business! You do what he says, when he says. Nothing more, got it?”

  It proved a moot point. There were no scalpels or surgical tools in sight, nor much else in the way of medical instruments, Xenecia noted. Talk about a fly-by-night operation. Still, she nodded. Best to let Angry Mouth think she had no designs on reclaiming the balance of power.

  As for the patient, she could see now that he was not struggling but seizing. Rather hard, too, by the look of things.

  “What would you have me do?”

  The doctor lifted his head long enough to fix her with a disbelieving stare beneath bushy, furrowed brows. “What does it look like?” he asked around a stim injector clenched between his front teeth. “Hold him still while I inject him!”

  Xenecia stepped over to the head of the table, the hard plastic of a discarded stim cartridge crunching beneath her heavy boot. At least three others lay nearby, a quick glance told her. Then the man flopped a shoulder down hard on the table and she clamped her hand upon it, pinning it in place. She followed suit with the other and while the man continued to seize, he was at least restrained.

  The doctor allowed himself all of a moment to take a steadying breath before plunging the injector into the man’s neck. It released with a pneumatic hiss, followed by a sharp click as the cartridge was ejected. With a muted clatter it joined its fellows on the floor before falling silent.


  The final injection seemed to have the desired effect. The patient calmed, his fits and spasms downgrading to tics and twitches as the stims did their work. The tiny room heaved with a collective sigh of relief… only to be plunged right back into full panic mode when the seizing began anew, harder and fiercer than any before it.

  “Give him another dose! Hurry!”

  “That was the last one,” the doctor barked back at Angry Mouth. “Do I look like I’m stockpiling stims here?”

  With nothing left to arrest the violent assault on his brain, the patient didn’t stand a chance. At that point all they could do was stand and watch. The veins in his neck bulged; thin streams of white foam poured from his mouth. All at once the man went still, his limbs flopping limply upon the table. His right arm landed not quite flush with its edge, rolling off the side and lolling there haphazardly.

  With a heavy sigh the doctor cursed the loss of his patient. Or so Xenecia thought until he fell upon the unfortunate man, riffling through his pockets for payment or anything else of value.

  “Damn it.”

  Apparently he had tapped out his stim supply for nothing. Tough break, that.

  “What happened?” Angry Mouth demanded, still trying to make sense of the scene. “Why didn’t it work?”

  “Something disrupted his neural pathways. The stims should have counteracted it. Why they didn’t, I can’t tell you. That’s the pathologist’s problem now.” Released from the weight of his duties, the doctor’s shoulders slumped. He was a slender man, older and slight of stature. His cheeks were flushed, his brow dappled with sweat. The struggle with the younger, stronger, seizing man had clearly taken its toll. “Look, I have to call this in to station security. If the both of you go right now I’ll leave you out of the report.”

  Angry Mouth eyed the dour doctor suspiciously. “Why would you do that?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how much more complicated this gets if I mention two armed women burst in here and held me hostage? I just want this bum out of my clinic so I can go home and drink until I forget about this mess.”

  “‘Bum,’” Xenecia repeated. “Some bedside manner you have, doctor.”

  “It’s not bedside manner once they’re dead,” he countered.

  On further reflection, she couldn’t deny he had something of a point. “Touché.”

  The doctor shook his head, waving off her concession. “I’m going to make that call to station security now. You’ve got five minutes.” With that, he shuffled out of the room. On his way down the hall he added, “Oh, and thank you both for not shooting me.”

  * * *

  The doctor had barely cleared the room before Angry Mouth descended upon the dead man. Xenecia didn’t think it possible, but the woman’s search was even less respectful than that of her predecessor. Shoes pulled off, pockets turned out, coveralls torn open‌—‌in a matter of seconds the man looked as if he had been attacked by a gang of ravenous street urchins. Whatever it was she was looking for, the woman seemed to have only the most general idea of where she might find it.

  For her part, Xenecia collected her mare’s leg from the floor. What little sound it made as she hefted it and placed the stock against her shoulder was lost on Angry Mouth, still too busy fussing over the dead man to notice. Indeed, she seemed to have all but forgotten that Xenecia was even there.

  Well, at least until she turned around.

  “Whoa… “

  “Who are you?” Xenecia demanded as she regarded the woman over the barrel of her carbine.

  “Seriously? We’re really going to do this over some petty squabble? Come on, you heard the doc. Security will be here any minute. Let’s just put our guns down and walk away, yeah?”

  “Who. Are. You?”

  “Look, sister, from where I’m standing, you’re the one holding me hostage, so we could always just wait and see who they‌—‌”

  “Correction: You are being detained. Not only am I authorized by dispensation of the Triumvirate to carry this weapon aboard station, I am also empowered to act as a security surrogate. So yes, we shall wait.”

  To that, the woman had only one response: “Well, shit.”

  “Indeed,” Xenecia confirmed. “Now, do not make me ask a third time.”

  The choice between staring down an ultimatum or her carbine proved as easy as Xenecia suspected. Dropping all pretense, Angry Mouth straightened and properly introduced herself. “My name is Sergeant Soshi Anarraham. I’m with Arathian Aerospace Defense, Wraith Division.”

  Called it, she thought, though she had never heard of this alleged ‘Wraith Division.’ A branch of AAD spec ops, most likely. It would explain the woman’s military bearing, as well as her uncanny presence. Something about Sergeant Anarraham’s very being raised the hackles at the base of her neck. As if she were privy to something important, perhaps mortally so.

  “Why are you here?”

  “What, you’re not going to frogmarch me off to get friendly with your security buddies? What are you waiting for?”

  “In case it has not already been adequately established, I am the one asking the questions.”

  “Because your station and the peace of this system are in grave danger.”

  There was that phrase again. Like the proverbial worm in the apple, the Grom’s dire prediction burrowed itself deeper still within Xenecia’s brain. What seemed only a minor nuisance an hour before had become an existential threat. Working her lips into a fine, hard line‌—‌who had the angry mouth now?‌—‌Xenecia made a decision she could only hope she would not come to regret.

  She lowered her carbine.

  “Come with me.”

  The self-described wraith was rendered speechless by the sudden display. Speechless, but not motionless. Instinct and years of training spurred Sergeant Anarraham to action, the lack of a snappy one-liner be damned.

  Station security was hot on their heels by the time they finally left the clinic. Thankfully neither of the men following up on the doctor’s call knew that.

  “Hey, doc. Heard you got a stiff one in here,” one of the security officers said as they strode into the office, “and not the kind my partner usually comes in for help with.”

  Xenecia and her new shadow were long gone before they could hear his partner’s undoubtedly witty retort.

  Even absent the threat of pursuit, the two remained silent until they were safe within the relative privacy of Xenecia’s room behind the seamstress’s shop. Sergeant Anarraham took one look around and pulled a critical face. Evidently the space was not up to operational standards, at least so far as hideouts and crash pads were concerned. Sadly for her, it was the only space available to Xenecia on such short notice.

  “Tell me about your mission,” she said, short and to the point as ever.

  There was that look again. One part appraisal, two parts dismissal.

  “How long have you lived aboard this station?”

  “Two years, four months, and twenty-eight days.”

  “Then you’re aware of its history? How it was established as a civilian outpost to check the ambitions of expansionist elements within the planetary governments?”

  “I am aware that is the preferred narrative of the Triumvirate. Personally I have always found its plausibility a bit… lacking.” Not that it mattered to Xenecia one way or the other. She had no vested interest in the political affairs or wheelings and dealings of the planetary elite, or even those of the Triumvirate, for the matter.

  Or rather, she thought she had no vested interest prior to her run-in with Sergeant Anarraham.

  “Well, if nothing else you have a finely calibrated bullshit detector,” the sergeant allowed with a snort. Something like laughter? Hard to tell with this one. “You’re right, the popular narrative is more or less fiction. The real reason the Estropans and Arathians don’t turn you into a pretty light show for the people on the ground is that your station has been hosting high-level meetings between the planetary el
ite for decades. Well, that and the scads and scads of contraband that gets waved through here on a daily basis.”

  “And the significant loss of life it would represent,” Xenecia added. Thousands of Estropan and Arathian expats called Over/Under Station home, with others hailing from elsewhere within the system. No doubt they too would be aggrieved to learn of the calculated slaughter of their own sons and daughters abroad. Surely that had to factor into the equation somehow…

  As if reading her mind, Anarraham raised her palm before her, tilting it from side to side. “Ehh, not so much, no. Mostly the secret base and contraband thing.”

  Xenecia frowned. Not surprising. Not exactly comforting, either, but not surprising. A secret relationship benefitting both the station and the very governments it purported to resist would certainly explain the status quo better than the self-serving narrative pushed by the Triumvirate. As for the planetary elite, they had no shortage of enemies among their own people. Where better to avoid scrutiny or potential attack from extremist groups within than up among the stars themselves?

  “I take it one of these meetings is scheduled to take place in the near future?”

  “Precisely. What’s more, my division of Arathian Aerospace Defense recently received intelligence suggesting the time and location of the meeting had become known to extremist groups with vested interests in rekindling the conflicts of previous generations.”

  She had no problem believing that, either. While both Estropo and Arathia maintained robust militaries, the outbreak of war after decades of relative peace would kickstart each planet’s military industrial establishment. State of the art vehicles would be rushed to production, older vehicles repaired and retrofitted, long-neglected stockpiles suffused with glittering new tech and other vital supplies. The pockets of profiteers on both sides would fatten and swell and it would all begin again, destined never to end.

  “And you believe one of these extremist groups was able to smuggle an operative aboard the station?”