Astra: Synchronicity

by Lisa Eskra

  "I wouldn't dream of it. You'll hear from me."

  The line went dead. He might be a man of few words, but he got the job done. Two centuries had taught her that was the most redeeming quality possible in a man.

  Soon, Magnius would be home. And this time Tiyuri would not fail her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "This is it, you guys. In a few minutes you'll be someone else."

  Amii, Nadine, and Magnius stood on a cobblestone street after midnight in an area of Northampton most locals stayed away from. Fifteen years ago, the underprivileged had been relocated to Quad Three in an effort to consolidate crime and make the city a safer place. It worked but not without significant grumbling from the rest of the UE. As time passed, psions moved into the area and made it a hotspot for random violence. Wandering around Quad Three alone after sundown was an invitation for murder.

  When Amii glanced up, the night sky amazed her. The Milky Way cut across the heavens in beautiful clarity. The twinkle of the stars through the atmosphere captivated her senses and distracted her from the scent of rotten garbage wafting down the alley. She felt eyes watching her from the shadows, but no one else was around. Only the three of them roamed in violation of curfew at this hour.

  Magnius rubbed his wrist. "I've done this before. When I had my name changed. Who exactly are we impersonating?"

  "No one. I had unique chips made for both of you. I figured it would be the best way to keep it on the down low." She handed each of them a new ID chip. "I also took the liberty of marrying the two of you."

  "You did what?"

  Nadine sighed. "Feel free to head downtown for a divorce tomorrow if you must. I just wanted to make things easier."

  "Yeah…I bet you did." He nodded at the door. "Who is this guy anyways?"

  She pressed her hand against a panel next to the door. "A telepath. I've worked with him before. He said he'd help you."

  After almost a minute, Amii heard rustling behind the door. A short bald man cracked it open and peered into the darkness at them. When he spotted Nadine, he waved them inside. The scent of mold and mildew hit them with suffocating force. Uneven piles of dirty plates mingled with dusty stacks of old books throughout the kitchen. Several cockroaches scurried toward dark corners as they passed to the living room.

  Flames lapped inside a vintage wood-burning stove in the darkened room. A white sheet covered the couch, and candelabras lit the walls with a romantic glow. A desk and table were filled with comtabs and mechanical equipment. Several holographic implants lay next to an ID scanner.

  The man paced around in the center of a frayed oriental rug patting his hands nervously. An intense violet aura consumed his eyes. "I know I said I was gonna do for this for you, but I can't now. Given who you've brought me, I think it's only a minor inconvenience. Nothing will change except for the fact that I'm gonna get caught."

  Nadine shook her head. "What's the problem?"

  "Him. You didn't say you were bringing him. The word is out that Aliane is after him. If I do this, that assassin of hers is gonna be on my doorstep. He'll drag it out of me before he kills me. No, you have to go now."

  "What about me?" Amii asked. "Would you do it for me?"

  He approached her and stared up at her in silence for a few moments. The glow of his eyes faded while he studied her with dubious care. He cast a glance toward the others. "Leave us."

  Magnius flinched, but Nadine grabbed his arm and turned them around. After a brief pause, she led him out the kitchen door. "We'll be right outside."

  Once they left, he put his hand on her back and pointed to his worktable. "I'm only doing this as a favor. Last one I'll ever do for her. How could she even think about bringing him here? Too lost in her ivory tower to have a clue?"

  "Why are you helping me then?"

  He grabbed a machine off the table that looked older than the City of Dreams. "I have a weakness for pretty girls. What man doesn't?" He sat her down onto a stool, took her hand, and inserted it into the vise-like contraption. "Relax. This will only hurt for a second."

  Amii shivered and closed her eyes, expecting a blade to drop like a guillotine and slice her hand clean off her arm at the wrist. A piece of cold metal settled on top of her wrist and cinched down on it. Discomfort turned to unbearable pressure before she heard a distinct pop and the device eased back up. She wiggled her fingers to prove her hand remained attached.

  When she opened her eyes, she gasped when she saw the recessed hole in her arm lined with sterile plastic. Implants were keyed in a way that made them almost impossible to remove from their base. People could rip the entire thing out of their arm if they wanted to, but getting by in Astra with no ID proved difficult. The trick lied in removing the holographic implant, which the ID chip sat under, without destroying either.

  Only a handful of locations could replace implants legally, but stringent precautions guarded and scrutinized the facilities to prevent foul play involving IDs. Some people found their own ways around the system using ugly machines cobbled together from everyday equipment. Few had the know-how to do it, and finding them proved the biggest challenge of all.

  She handed him her new ID chip, which he inserted into the scanner. "Elise Vaughn. Pretty name. Sounds like an heiress from a film noir." He removed her old ID with a pair of tweezers and slid the new one in. "Do you want a new implant? Yours was what, sixth generation?" He took one off the desk and held it up to the light. "Version 8.5.1—it has a holodiode that can generate a neon bracelet around your wrist."

  She wondered why anyone would want something like that but nodded to pacify him. "Yes, thank you." He placed it on her wrist and screwed down the top clamp of the machine on it. "Are you sure you won't help him?"

  The man tightened several half-rusted screws and a moment later he was done. When she removed her hand, she could not tell anything had been altered. "It does neither of us any good if I help him. Just him coming here means I'm dead. Tiyuri'll get the information he needs and your friend will be no better off than he is now. So pointless is what it is."

  She had to convince him. Both of their lives depended on it, not to mention Xander's and Lyneea's. If a single man's death could save four people, that justified it.

  "What can I do to change your mind?" Amii slid her left hand up his thigh to emphasize her point. "Please?"

  He took a ragged breath and leaned back against his desk while arching his pelvis toward her. "Convince me then, baby."

  Yanking his shirt out of his pants, she ran her fingers up his bare chest at a seductive pace. She stood and pressed her body against him, grinding her hips into his in a blatant attempt to arouse him. As she unbuttoned his pants, she fluttered her eyelashes at him and flicked her tongue against his lips. He put his hands on her shoulders and groaned with desire enough to tell her he'd completely let his guard down. Now that she had him right where she wanted him, she unzipped his pants and heard them fall to the floor with a dull thud.

  She stuck both her hands down his boxers and grabbed his nuts. When she squeezed them, he winced. "You'd be surprised how little force it takes to rip these suckers off. You'll bleed to death before you even have the chance to call for help. I'll bet it's the most painful way to die there is." She tightened her grasp on them for emphasis. "I don't care how pointless it is, you are going to do this for us. Understood?"

  His lips twisted into a snarl on an otherwise pained expression. "Fine…bitch."

  "Ooh," she mocked. "At least I'm not your bitch." She knelt down and pulled out the disruptor tucked in his back pants pocket. "Fix yourself before I call them back in."

  As he buttoned his pants back up, she stared at the gun. A 380 Prime. The cold metal felt good in her hand. She recalled how it worked, how to field strip it, how to clean it, how to rig it with explosive ammo…and a part of her wondered why she had such an intimate knowledge of the weapon.

  Amii grabbed her old ID chip off the table and stuck it in her pocket. She hid the gun in the sh
adows beside her when she turned toward the door. "Nadine, you can bring Magnius back inside," she called.

  The two of them returned. The man's disheveled shirt and rosy face made it appear she'd done something sexual with him. "Okay, let's get this over with," he said and gestured to the stool in front of him.

  Magnius sat down and stuck out his arm. He stared at Amii the whole time. It didn't take a propulsion expert to figure out what was on his mind; he wondered how she'd swayed the man into agreeing to this and feared she'd compromised her morals to do it.

  The man smirked when he put Magnius' hand into the machine and brought the contraption down onto his arm. "Your girlfriend here's a real doll. She's got some tongue on her too."

  "What?" His response caused him to jerk his wrist in the device, and suddenly his face crumpled in agony. "Shit!"

  "Hold still," he told Magnius and wrested a sharp metal bracket out of his skin. He flailed his hand out toward Amii. "Get me a towel. Something. Anything."

  She scanned the shelves next to her and snatched a green dresser scarf off one of them. Seeing all the blood on the table gave her pause before he took it from her and blotted the mess up. A clean gash cut into the side of his arm, but he'd not yet slowed the bleeding from the wound.

  The man held the scarf against the wound and took Magnius' other hand to hold it in place. "Apply pressure. And don't move this time."

  He kept as still as humanly possible while the device extracted his implant. After his ID chip was changed, the man held the implant up to the light and examined it. "First generation. A classic. Worth quite a bit actually." He didn't give Magnius the option to upgrade.

  In less than a minute, the procedure was done. Magnius took his old ID chip and cradled his wrist on his way out, muttering a string of expletives the entire time.

  "Thank you," Nadine said.

  The man rolled his eyes and waved them out. "Just go."

  Her eyes flashed for a few seconds before she turned around and headed to the door.

  Amii winked at him and pursed her lips. "Thanks for the gun." With that, the three of them disappeared back into the night.

  The second lady took Amii's hand and clutched it in hers. "Thank you. I'm sorry it didn't go better. He's not a bad person. Paranoid but he means well. Not that any of it will matter after tomorrow…"

  "So is he really going to die?" she asked.

  "The odds aren't in his favor, but nothing can change that. We must all play the role fate has assigned no matter where it leads us."

  "Maybe we should help him."

  "Are you crazy?" Magnius said. "It would lead Tiyuri straight to us. Even wandering the streets at night like this is a risk. He could be following us as we speak. Or any lunatic with a grudge against psions."

  Nadine shook her head. "We're safe from Tiyuri. And I know either of you is capable of defending yourselves should you need to."

  Amii had a hard time concealing her nervous anxiety, not of the assassin but of Northampton. Nadine might be able to conceal herself from the prying eyes of the city using her telepathy, but Amii possessed no such gift. Every dark corner could harbor a brutal menace, and she longed to be on Pisa away from civilization. "I don't feel safe here. An odd thing to say, I know. But in a lawless society where deceit is a way of life, I know where I stand. Here, I don't even want to look at people the wrong way. How are you supposed to protect yourself if you can't carry a disruptor?"

  "Trust, Amii…trust."

  "How can I trust when all my life people have been after us?" She stared at her implant and turned it under the glow of a streetlamp. "How do I activate the bracelet on this thing?"

  Nadine tapped her own implant a few times and activated hers. A holographic projection encircled her wrist with a haze of neon pink butterflies. She reached over and did the same for her friend, but Amii's appeared in a standard green glowstick. "You can download all sorts of different shapes and colors. It'll stay on for an hour. It's solar powered—the latest breakthrough from the Academy." She watched the telepath twirl her wrist, and the holograms moved around it in slow motion.

  "Can we get this fashion show on the road ladies?" Magnius said from over their shoulder.

  Hand-in-hand, the two women strutted down the street together. Amii smiled. "One day, we won't even need to wear clothes anymore. It will all be holograms."

  "Now that's scary," Nadine said. "I'd like to think we have better uses for our technology than that."

  "You mean like blowing up the Xuranian palace and assassinating General Secretary Straikovsky right under everyone's noses?"

  The second lady's tone turned somber when she stared at her friend. "Yeah."

  They continued the rest of the way to the Westwood Estate in silence. The quick dose of reality ruined their lightened mood. Somewhere in space, war was being waged right now. And it only marked the beginning.

  ***

  Nadine knelt on the bed and watched her troubled husband dress to meet with the President and Chairman Dodd. She'd slipped back into bed during the night without disturbing him, but once eight rolled around, he commenced with his morning routine. Because she was scheduled to visit the Academy this afternoon, she joined him for breakfast.

  Since their return, Bryan rarely slept more than five hours and it had begun to take its toll on him. He drank coffee all the time when he hadn't been able to stand the taste of it for as long as she'd known him. He took stims to stay focused, which were banned on most worlds across Astra; throughout Chara, the drugs remained legal though regulated and taxed. He hadn't become an addict yet, but she feared for him.

  Day by day, the couple became more frustrated with the failings of their government. Zion had fallen to the Xurainians, but because it wasn't an AC system, the council bided their time without striking back. She'd been outraged over the assassination of General Secretary Straikovsky and the subsequent accusations that it was an act of UE government-sponsored terrorism. However, for all their protests, their government couldn't prove the theory wrong.

  Petty Officer Jon Weber provided the first lead. His wife and three kids lived on DeSoto, Bandiera—the same planet generations of his family grew up on since humans departed Earth so long ago. Weber was one of the few missing with the ability and opportunity to stage said attack, and since he hadn't been assigned off the Kearsarge for the morning speeches, he became the primary lead. Unfortunately, no one had been able to find any additional evidence against him. Nothing in his life appeared out of order until the assassination of the General Secretary.

  Some digging revealed Weber had a secret relationship with another man in his hometown, James Wolfe, who was a farmer and also unhappily married. Wolfe had been an active agent in the UE's intelligence agency until he retired seven years ago. His connection with Weber couldn't be ignored. Since the day of the attack, AC resources were pooled to get to the bottom of the mystery, yet they weren't able to stop him.

  To the dismay of the UE, Wolfe's evidence trail stretched across Astra and back again. He was a Centrist supporter when the attack occurred, but afterwards he led several rallies on DeSoto where he accused the PAU of siding with the Xuranians—that they were sympathizers with the aliens and called for war. Five days before Straikovsky's death, Wolfe booked passage to Barnard Station and headed to Kashtivone from there. Asians found what appeared to be his final message, but there was no way of knowing if it was authentic.

  When the PAU declared war and laid claim to Pisa, the hawks in the council embraced opportunity to strike back at their long-time enemies. Skirmishes near Shambhala erupted within days. And now rumor had it the PAU planned to meet with the Xuranian High Commander on Barnard Station. The Xuranians had previously made a big deal about negotiating peace only with a united Astra. Had the prospect of long-term war and occupation changed their minds?

  Bryan strolled over to Nadine and took her hands. "I want you to come with me."

  The second lady frowned. "You know how mad it makes me to have
to listen to the chairman prattle on as though war is the answer. He's quite fortunate he's not on New England so I can't dominate his mind. His closed-mindedness will be the death of us all."

  The Vice President paused for a long time, hoping she hadn't meant what she'd said. But she did, and both of them knew it. "President Scheidecker told me to bring you."

  "No, he didn't. But I'll come." She stood and straightened her lilac dress before he led them out of their suite toward the President's office in the west wing.

  He'd never lied to her so blatantly before. His deteriorating mental state concerned her, but she could do little about it. Even now, no one else was suited to take his place in what might be the fall of their wonderful society. Every day she longed for a vision to assure her everything would blow over, but she never got one.

  All the fair-weather pacifists had jumped onto the war bandwagon out of fear. Few people thought it was worth the bother to talk to the Xuranians because it made the AC look weak. All these years of trade restrictions and demands against the PAU had taught them nothing. Humankind looked damned to continue making the same mistakes over and over again. They'd forgotten how precious liberty was after all this time, and no one could save them from themselves.

  The President greeted them when they arrived at his office. "Thank you for coming, Bryan. Nadine." He gestured to a plate of small crustless sandwiches on a coffee table. "Please, help yourselves. The chairman will be on the comm shortly."

  She watched Bryan sit down on the couch and eat the hors d'oeuvres, but her hunger waned these past few weeks due to the stress. She walked over to the large bay windows overlooking the plaza outside and gazed outside. The heat of summer descended on the city faster than anyone expected. Tourists in shorts and t-shirts snapped pictures of the Capitol Building and explored the City of Dreams. With the onslaught of war at hand, she didn't think she'd be able to relax for a long time.