Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  Everyone had opportunity. A chance to attain their dreams.

  As my grandfather said, even in a batch of ripe apples, there will always be one with a worm hidden inside, where rot could spread to the others. Worlds demanded independence, no longer swearing allegiance to Earth's Hepburn Federation, named after the man who founded it.

  Hepburn had many parts to it. Trade, commerce, naturalization, immigration, agriculture and the military. These were the same organizations Earth once worked under, but now they were handled by a single entity.

  A lot of people didn't like that. They didn't like being regulated and wanted to make their own rules. Three of the young worlds formed their own coalition, called it the Crimson Stand, and declared war on Earth.

  But they would never reach Earth. Hepburn saw to that.

  I watched it all from a distance, thinking I was far away from the conflict. Until the CS attacked Vrekka. My home was taken and I was packed off to serve under their command to fight Hepburn. Vrekka was the only home I'd ever known, a world 80% water and the main exporter of fish to the Hepburn worlds.

  Sailing was all I knew. I couldn't fight. I didn't know how to start.

  Luckily our transport was hit by Hepburn forces, the prisoners were taken to Mendosa, a world similar to Earth, with lush forests, dry deserts and snowy mountain tops. There I was made an offer to join the Helix Organization, a covert group under the Hepburn Military Coalition. A chance to get revenge on the bastards who killed my family and destroyed my home wasn't something I could refuse.

  At Helix I signed over my life to them with the promise of destroying Crimson Stand. I was made anew. Literally. A newer, younger, cloned body with enhanced strength and intelligence. I chose the path of assassin and became the best in the class. I was partnered with Rich Sanders, an Earth-sider whose grandparents had immigrated to Vrekka and were killed in the invasion. We became each other's support, learned the other's movements until we could finish the other's sentences. We learned how to whisper to each other, a tone and way of speaking among the Helix Agents. This ability made it impossible for the enemy to intercept communiques.

  Fifteen years later the Crimson Stand was defeated. Hepburn forces reclaimed those worlds ravaged by the CS and started plans to rebuild.

  Those in Helix were discharged with honors and sent away with the recommendation we not contact each other

  I was given a nice, easy desk job at Renkaru Labs in Los Angeles. I remember being a bit frightened to live there, thinking the air quality would damage my new and improved body. I'd survived poisons, traps, near death mistakes, and even a few really close calls. I didn't want to be done in by pollution.

  I was pleasantly surprised when all the rumors I'd heard about Los Angeles were old. That the City of Angels was a recovered place, full of golden skyscrapers, airway travel, and brotherly love. It was a city reborn. And there I was in it. Happy. With my own apartment, my own money, and my own life. No orders. No worrying about the next mission.

  I'd even allowed myself a boyfriend…and a girlfriend. I couldn't make up my mind. I was just…happy. Not a worry.

  Until now.

  I called into work early that morning now that Rich had me thoroughly awake. Since I hadn't taken a sick day once during my employment, the request was approved immediately. I checked on shuttles out of LAX and picked one that would put me arriving mid-afternoon to Hartsfield.

  I showered as I waited on a missive or whisper from Rich. When time came for me to leave for the 'port, I worried about a vehicle outside my apartment building. It'd been parked in the same place since the day before. Dark windows. No lights. I asked the doorman about it. He said he'd noticed it, called the Hepburn Police Alliance, and was told not to worry about it.

  If I hadn't been trained as a soldier, I would have done as the doorman was instructed to do. But a dark vehicle that didn't catch the notice of the HPA or their drones whizzing around the city like pigeons? Every alarm I had went on high alert.

  I took the tram to the 'port, not wanting to pay their exorbitant parking fees. Three men, all wearing dark suits that sort of resembled the style of the HPA, but with red piping, got on the train at different stations and into the same car I was in.

  Making it look like I forgot something with an exaggerated action of rolling my eyes and putting in my earpiece to make a call, I got up last minute and got off the train two stops before mine. I stood just outside to watch it leave and noticed the men were still onboard, each of them looking at me and talking into their wrist-links.

  I really try not to be paranoid, but what's that old saying? You're not paranoid if someone's really out to get you? And right now, all my instincts and survival skills were telling me those men were following me. It wasn’t just Rich telling me everyone in my former team was dead, but also—why else keep such a tight visual on me?

  Instead of going to the 'port, I sent in an additional sick day request, then ditched my regular wrist-link and took two trams, shorter distance carriers, to a different station where I kept a locker full of supplies. I'd set the locker up as a habit when I first came Earthside. In fact, I had seven of these locations all over the city, even one across the border in Oregon. And in nine years I'd never thought of them.

  Until now.

  The lock was palm print only, no voice. I didn't want any nearby drones picking up my tone. They could identify me with one syllable. The locker popped open. I grabbed the three medium bags out of it, then opened a collapsible bag and stuffed everything inside before I closed the locker. It immediately reset to lock. But I wanted to go one step further.

  Looking around, I did something I hadn't done in nine years. Where Rich could initiate whispers at great distance, even interplanetary sometimes, I could interface with machinery. It wasn’t a hundred percent, meaning sometimes the machine was too old to have any kind of electronic signature I could hack into. I placed my hand on the sensor, closed my eyes, and whispered to the circuitry inside. I gave the locker a new renter, spoofed an account with ready cash in it, and made it believe a guy named Jake Monacan had rented it for the past six weeks. He was this bully I'd scrapped with on Vrekka. He'd been killed during Vrekka's occupation. At least his meaningless life would live on in an empty container.

  Sort of like his head had been.

  The station was in a small town on the coast side of Los Angeles. It's also where I kept one of three homes all over the world.

  Still not sure I'd thrown those mystery men off my tail, I took several routes around the city (not a big city) until I felt sure there weren't any other men in black-and-red suits following me, nor were there drones. The HPA were busy setting their spies up all over the world and tying them into a central CPU at their World Headquarters in New York and Tokyo, but they weren't everywhere yet.

  Once inside, I checked the house, the perimeter, and the house's central mainframe. I kept this one off the grid so it couldn't be hacked into, except from a physical port. A port only I knew the whereabouts of. It was from there I checked the names Rich had given me, the names of my friends, the only family I knew.

  Walker Riven—killed in a house fire in Queens. Suki Yamato—killed in a building fire in Kyoto. Gerald Perdito—killed in a restaurant fire in León. No other casualties. And they all died within a week of each other.

  That wasn't a coincidence.

  In the Helix Organization the upper leaders broke us into teams consisting of four pairings. Our team consisted of me and Rich, Walker and Gerald, Suki and Eve, and Terrence and Loretta. Eve, Terrence and Loretta were all killed during the war, and I'd seen what losing Eve did to Suki. Helix partners were as close as lovers sometimes, and I was pretty certain, more. Rich and I were pretty sure Suki and Eve had been more physically to each other. After Eve’s death, Suki never wanted to talk about her again.

  And now there were only two of us left. Helix had ten teams total. Were there mysterious deaths in the other teams? I didn't know how to find out because I didn
't know their names or what planet they had been assigned to for retirement. Once paired and teamed, we no longer had any contact with the other Agents to prevent any mistakes in the field visually. We only knew each other from their whispers. Rich's whisper this morning had been the first one I'd heard in nine years.

  On a hunch I typed in Rich's name, but also added in Helix, HPA, and the name of our team captain, Johnny Norman. That sounds like a fake name, doesn’t it?

  There were over twenty Rich Sanders on the East coast of the United North American Territories. I was surprised there were so few. One of them caught my eye. History professor at Harvard, Cambridge. Non-tenured, so he'd been there fewer years. I got the full name Richard Edward Sanders and found a picture of him. Bingo!

  Boston was a long way away from New Atlanta. What could be so interesting there?

  He looked exactly the same. Just like me. After nine years, neither of us had changed.

  I did a little digging and found Rich's posts in a forum on genetics and the dangers of alien technology. I followed the trail, which led down a series of embedded responses. The question was pretty nonsensical, geeks discussing the process of cloning and its moral problems. Old news.

  And then I hit a link Rich sent to the person he was arguing with. The link took me to a blank page. Not even a dedicated address.

  SYSTEM CHECK 101 HAS DETECTED A PENDING DOWNLOAD. ACCEPT OR DELETE?

  Download? My security was pretty good, and if it was flagging the download, then it sensed something odd about it. I downloaded the file to a slip, a flat plastic portable device. It was a bit antiquated, but slim and easy to carry. By sending the file directly to the slip, it bypassed my system's logic nodes.

  After booting up my older system, the one I put together myself, I copied the file, scanned it, and then opened it.

  It was an encrypted text file. I also recognized the code. It was mine and Rich's personal language. As partners, all Helix Agents were required to create their own code to keep their communications with Helix safe. Of course, we had to turn over our Rosetta Stones to the head of Helix…

  But Rich and I had made a second language, very different than our first. And this was it.

  I decoded it in my head because that's where the only RS was located.

  MADE SOME INQUIRIES. SERIOUS SHIT, BLUEBIRD. WILL CONTACT JOHNNY AND MEET. WILL FIND YOU. R.

  Bluebird. He used to call me Bluebird because I liked dying my hair blue. It was drab brown now. He'd called me that in this file so I'd know it was him; a file that would just look like corrupted code to anyone else.

  Was Johnny in New Atlanta on retirement? Was that why Rich was there? Playing a hunch, I uploaded a response in the same code and then waited for a response while I opened a can of spaghetti. It heated itself, and I sat in the quiet dark of my secret hideaway and ate, a bottle of water beside me.

  Seven hours later, I got a response from Rich with a place and a date and time. Tomorrow. Three in the afternoon.

  A responsible adult would call in to work and let them know she'd be out all week due to the illness. But I had a feeling, just a gut-hunch, that calling into my office, into the job Helix had arranged for me, wasn't a good idea.

  I didn't realize how right I was.

  * * *

  Getting into New Atlanta was easy enough. The weather service had the city blanketed in rain, so I took a cab to my hotel. I was booked in as Birdie Blue. Yeah, it was stupid and cheesy, but it was a name Rich could find if he needed me. And I was needing him. I had that old butterfly feeling in my stomach again, like I used to get when he and I would start out on a new campaign. A new planet, a new life, a new cover.

  But in this scenario, Helix wasn't there to back me up. I was on my own.

  It was close to noon once I was finished changing my looks in the mirror. I had to get from Decatur to Roswell, which given I was in a city I'd never visited before, should be a piece of cake. No one to recognize me.

  I took local transportation, and after three trams, two skaters and finally an express, I made it to Roswell. At the station I was surprised to see a drone. Drones had become commonplace in much larger cities since the early 2000s. They did everything from monitor traffic, crime, and behavior to exploration. And after a while, no one really noticed them.

  But I did. This wasn't a usual service drone. This was a Helix military drone and was once used as team backup during missions. They were quicker, silent, and more resilient than the average drone. And they could sync with a Helix team’s whisper. They couldn’t translate what was said, but they could detect a whisper. That made them good at finding wounded agents calling for help, but bad when I wanted to whisper Rich to tell him I was close by. With its black casing and blue Helix symbol on the side, their blue light had once been a comfort to me during the war. Now? It felt a bit menacing.

  Why was it here in Roswell, Georgia? I worried for a few seconds that it was tracking me, but it never seemed to focus on me. I took a cab to the small park where Rich said he wanted to meet. It was still raining, though the temperature was moderate. Just enough to put a chill in the air.

  The cab dropped me off in the middle of a town square in front of a shoe store. The park took up the center. There was a gazebo, a swing, and some over-sized iron monument in the center. Per my instructions, I bought a pretzel in the cafe on the corner and sat inside the gazebo.

  I was shocked when Rich seemed to come out of nowhere and sit beside me. We stared at each other for a few seconds before squeezing the hell out of one another. After a few seconds, I pulled back enough to look at him, but didn't let go. He hadn't changed at all. "What're you doing here? Are you looking for Johnny?"

  "Yeah. I found his office, but he wasn't there and I haven't seen any other Agents."

  That's when I smacked his shoulder. "You never called me back."

  "That's because I found a few men in black suits with red trim following me."

  My eyes widened. "I found them following me too. But I gave them the slip and headed to one of my safe houses."

  He smiled at me. Damn, I'd missed that. "Good girl. How many you establish?"

  "Four. At the time I thought it was stupid, but now I'm not so sure."

  "It was smart." He took my hand, not for romance's sake, but because it gave us a cover for speaking low and close to one another. Any passersby would believe we were lovers. "Something's going down, San. And it's all about us."

  "Us? You mean the Agents?"

  "Yes. There's a lot you don't know because Johnny and I didn't share it with most of you."

  "You've been in contact with him too?"

  "He got hold of me first." Rich focused on me. "I don't know how to say it, but they're getting rid of us one by one. Don't talk—just listen. There’s something about our training, the cloning technique they used to give us these enhanced bodies, that has some very important people in Hepburn upset."

  "We're just clones. What's so bad about that? Oh no, it's not those morality pushers, is it?"

  "I wish. No one would want us dead."

  Why dead? What the hell. "Rich—we helped end the war!" I hissed.

  "Sshh. I know. I don't understand it either. Johnny contacted me a few days ago and told me he'd figured it all out, but I had to come here to meet with him. That's when I called you. I couldn't tell you much because I didn't know."

  "You're scaring me."

  "I'm damn scared, San. If Hepburn wants us dead, there's not a lot we can do."

  "We can fight?"

  "Suki was one of the best at being untraceable, invisible, and her gift was sensing enemies within a hundred kilometer radius. No one could get close to her. But there was nothing she could do about fire." He periodically looked around to check the perimeter.

  "Rich—what is it with the fires? All the names you gave me died in fires."

  "They've ALL died in fire, San. All of them."

  "There's more?"

  "Johnny said as much the last time we spoke
. I wanted you with me when I met with him. So—"

  What is it? I initiated the whisper, knowing the headache to follow was going to hurt. Is it the HPA?

  He shook his head. Drone.

  I felt a small bit of relief. Rich, drones are everywhere.

  Not Helix drones.

  What? It took everything I had not to turn and look at whatever it was he saw. I saw a Helix drone at the train station. It didn't seem to be focused on me.

  That's because you're wearing a disguise. He half smiled. Nice wig, by the way. I should have thought of it.

  Is it watching us?

  I can't tell. Damn, I should have initiated a whisper to begin with. I don't know how much it picked up, if it picked up anything— He hesitated and then slowly stood. Let's go. I want to test something.

  We walked hand in hand out of the park to the deli on the corner. Once inside, we stopped at the counter and I asked if they had a bathroom. We headed to the back where the two of us crowded inside the women’s room and locked the door. Did it follow us?

  Yeah, it did. It's right outside the front door. He licked his lips. Now I'm starting to understand our enemy's fear of our own drones.

  You don't think this is a trap, do you? That Johnny set us up?

  Trap for what? We haven't done anything wrong. We've both been good little soldiers and blended back into society like we were told to do. Universal peace is going to be achieved.

  Someone knocked on the door. "Hey…anybody in there? I really have to go."

  It didn't sound like a Helix operative, but they could fool just about anyone. Even us. We need to get out of here and find Johnny.

  Being cornered in an old-style deli bathroom wasn't exactly the best plan—not that being stuck in a bathroom is ever a good plan—but it gave us a bit of privacy. We knew how the drones worked and their limitations. Unless…their technology had been upgraded in the last nine years.