This Starry Deep

by Adam P. Knave

  I reached down, instead, and felt my knee. Bits of bark flaked onto my leg and I puzzled for a second before stopping to glance at the tree. Gaping rents in the bark showed me exactly how much those deaths did bother me. I brushed my hand off, wiping it across my chest, and reached for my knee again.

  Swollen, but serviceable. I decided to risk another sprint. I got maybe fifty feet before the knee gave out again. My wordless rage scared a nearby bird or two. Retirement I could deal with. It was, I realized, safe. Safe was acceptable. I had done enough and more than earned my rest. The betrayal of my body, however - that burned and ate at me like a fire.

  I started to walk back home. There was nothing else to do. It was getting dark, anyway. Soon working off lunch would become missing dinner, and Shae was going to grill some steaks.

  I walked, keeping a normal pace. About an hour out, the sky flashed white for a second. Several sonic booms sounded off at once and I stopped to listen and watch. I couldn’t make out the ships in question - they rose too fast. Their engines didn’t sound familiar, either.

  That kind of flash was a scatter tactic, a way to keep people from pinpointing you on their systems or with their eyes. There was no reason for it unless you were going out of your way to be untraceable. Generally it only worked with a cluster of ships, to confuse the enemy as to which ship went where. Good for double-blinds and switching out payload vehicles. Useless for what looked like two ships.

  I couldn’t tell where they launched from, exactly, but it had to be within fifty miles of the house. Shae would have picked them up and scanned them. I figured she’d let me know what they were when I got in.

  They might’ve been coming from the house itself, and maybe Shae was in trouble, but we’d each had a sub-dermal panic tracker installed years ago. It hadn’t gone off, so I didn’t worry. She could, I knew all too well, take care of herself. And the house, with any sort of warning, was a small fortress when need be.

  I kept walking, picking up my pace anyway. My knee complained, but I was careful to move only as fast as I could without crossing over the line to disabling myself. She was fine. I knew it. I didn’t slow down, regardless.

  The house looked fine from the outside. It’s when things are quiet, when the picture you see is exactly what you expect, that everything is likely to be wrong. I picked up my pace and, knee be damned, sprinted the last bit to the front door. I rested, leaning against the outside wall of the house, my hand cool against the siding. I allowed myself three deep breaths to recover and then grabbed the doorknob tightly, turning it. The readers in the knob unlocked the door and let me in.

  There was no reason for the door to be locked. We didn’t keep it locked when one of us was home. I dove into the house, not taking any chances, and rolled to a stop behind the couch. Nothing moved. Nothing at all.

  “Shae!” I called out, trying to decide if I was being foolish or prudent. But I knew. I hadn’t stayed alive by ignoring my gut on things like this. If I looked like an idiot later for my actions, so be it. But if I didn’t…

  Well, then, there I was.

  There was no response to my shout. I stood, warily, and made my way to the kitchen. Two steaks lay out on the counter. They sat there, on a cutting board, nearing room temperature with every passing second. Damn it all. I couldn’t piece it together, not quite.

  I started to search the house. I moved methodically, if carefully. Flung doors open hard and waited, clear of the doorways. Switched on overheads as I went, casting the whole place in harsh, telling light. I stopped in the bedroom and tapped a section of the floor with my foot, hard. A panel swung down and I reached in, pulling out an old gun.

  Projectile weaponry wasn’t in common use anymore, wasteful and too dangerous aboard a ship, but I kept one around the house just in case. Most people armored against sonics and minor heat-based weaponry. They weren’t up to a .45-caliber round in the chest. I enjoyed the edge it gave to home security.

  But there was nothing to secure. I wandered the house and found it as silent as the night sky. Nothing obvious. Not a single damned thing. The place looked like Shae had simply walked off in the middle of preparing dinner and forgot to lock up behind herself. So sure, if I was crazy, it made perfect sense.

  I wasn’t crazy. Not yet. So I moved on to the weapons store, the room that no one, except us, could get into. We had tested the doors against all sorts of munitions, having to redo the walls of the bedroom several times due to the blast radium. There was no way through the door, or the walls surrounding it, if you even knew where it was.

  I slid myself down the stairs and hit the lights. Shae had been here, but I couldn’t tell how recently. Nothing seemed too disturbed, which meant she’d come here to take an inventory and think. Still, nothing seemed to be missing.

  I checked the lockboxes that took up an entire corner of the room and saw they were still secure. I checked them anyway, my hand running over the ridged metal, tracing years of memory.

  I pulled my hand away, growing frustrated with myself, and crossed the room to the small lab we kept. An atmospheric scanner, a heat residue monocle, and a jamming box found their way into my hands without much thought. As I left, I grabbed a small, red metal box and headed upstairs. Lights off and door secured, I went back to the kitchen.

  The monocle showed me recent heat signatures, and I watched faded memories of my wife as she had moved around the room. Blurry and fading fast, there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal. I followed her phantom out of the room.

  The entranceway. Four other signatures leapt out at me, and by the brightly lit trails of their passage I could see a struggle. Shae’s heat index rose as she took them on, but one of them was crystal: arm raised and unmoving. He fired something. A disrupter, sonics, or worse? I couldn’t tell.

  I could tell that whatever it was hadn’t taken Shae out. The specter of her passing blurred off toward the bedroom. Of course, she was going for the exact gun that tugged my waistband down with its firm weight. She didn’t get there. The four figures, their heat dropped noticeably, stood in the entranceway. I saw Shae’s shape on the floor, heat dropped low.

  The atmo scanner flicked to life at my command. I thumbed the controls and swept the entire place. Minimal traces of gas in the bedroom. Not enough left to bother me now - it had dissipated quickly, but would certainly have been enough to take her out.

  My vision threatened to blur. Whoever they were, they had taken my wife. You don’t do that and live. It’s a simple equation. I studied the shape of the four figures as best I could, working only from their heat residue. Their shape, their armor and basic shape, seemed strange to me. Inhuman.

  I thought back to Mills. He said the invaders were, if his reports were right, taking people. If they were smart, at all, they would have known the Government would call us. So why not head here and grab us. But if they didn’t know everything—what if they were just loose enough in their research, coupled with being alien, that they thought Shae was me? Or that they figured taking her was good enough?

  I grabbed the phone and dialed without looking. The code didn’t change, that was certain. A voice answered, but I couldn’t hold on to what it said. I didn’t care.

  “Get me Mills. This is Madison, Jonah. Calling on hot basis,” I said in a simple monotone. I didn’t trust myself to talk above that, not then. Not when they had Shae.

  Mills came on quickly, asking me what was wrong, what had been done and pressed me for how he could help. I told him what I knew. He started to fuss and bother, offering suggestions and plans. I cut him off hard.

  “Send a ship. You wanted me on this, I’m on it. I need a transport ship, within an hour.”

  “Of course, Captain Madison,” he agreed quickly, “I’m sorry it—”

  “Save it. Less talking, more getting it done. Jonah out.”

  I hung up the phone and stared at it. I wanted to crush it, to throw it through a window, something. Anything that would make me feel better. None of it would, s
o I put the phone back and went into the bedroom to change.

  I grabbed my dress uniform from the closet and changed into it quickly. It felt like coming home, and I would have smiled if I wasn’t so ready to kill. I strode back out and opened the red metal box.

  I took out the two things in the box and pitched it back into the room over my shoulder. Stepping outside, I left the door open and stared into the darkened sky. Stars stared back. Soon I would be among them again. For all the wrong reasons.

  I uncoiled the holster belt I had taken from the red box and belted it on tightly. Then I hefted my gun, my old friend; the gun that had blasted the foot off of Talkon-Galxos’ President Alfonse, cut through the airlock on the Halgoron battle cruiser, and served me well in a thousand other moments. The gun that had saved my life for years on end.

  I lifted the gun and pointed it directly at the North Star, sighting along the barrel. I flicked off the safety and checked the power levels. Satisfied, my thumb clicked the safety back on and I slammed the gun home, deep into its holster. The creak of the leather when the gun settled felt right.

  “I’m coming for you, baby,” I said to the stars.

  I stood there, military straight, and waited. Nothing would move me again, except purpose. Right then, I had only one of those. I waited.

  Chapter 6– Jonah

  AFTER A WHILE I thought better of just standing there and went back into the house to grab a few things. Not much: a decent-sized bag of personal items and clothes, a few equipment boxes, and the like. I got it all outside and locked the house down. I put all of its systems into sleep mode and rerouted the phone to my personal communicator. By the time I was finished, there was a ship landing on my front lawn.

  Wide and solid, the thing was built like a brick. Extraction and personnel ships never did have style. Still, it shone in the night, gleaming like a dark promise. The thing settled down, lowering itself the last few feet on air jets. Running lights flashed from warning red to approachable green and the pilot hatch opened.

  “Captain Madison?” the pilot asked, climbing down to greet me.

  “Jonah,” I said, and nodded.

  “Spaceman first class Malik, sir. I—” he looked at the stack of boxes next to me, “well, sir, I’m not sure that all of that is allowable cargo.”

  “Malik? All of that has to go with me.”

  He nodded, caught between his conflicting duties, “No, I understand that, sir, but those three boxes were reading as high-grade cargo from the air. Regulations state—”

  “That you can’t transport them without proper paperwork, security, and authorization, right?” I asked.

  He nodded. And there was his problem. His first job was to get me up to the command ship as soon as possible. His second job was to fly correctly, where “correctly” meant that he followed the rules and didn’t endanger anyone through neglect. Letting my cargo onboard could constitute neglect if something went wrong, and that could cost him his flight status. I felt bad for him.

  “Well Malik, I do understand your situation,” I said, swallowing my impatience, “but you need to see the bigger picture. You were told this was a high priority recall, yes?”

  “Yes, sir, Captain Madison—”

  “Jonah,” I corrected him.

  “Jonah,” he corrected smoothly, if uneasily, “but if my sweep readings were right, I can’t take those crates.”

  “Look,” I said, feeling the annoyance threaten to creep into my voice, “nothing is going to go wrong with these crates.” I pulled out my blaster. “These things are built to withstand more firepower than either of us have. Hell, you could drop them from orbit and they wouldn’t crack.” I fired directly at one of the black crates and the surface shrugged it off, not even marring.

  “Uhm,” Malik said, raising an eyebrow, “is that an Acadian blaster?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. I holstered the gun and kicked a crate, “and see, the crates are fine. So why don’t we load them up and go already?”

  “Sir, Jonah, Acadian blasters are illegal. I can’t transport that, either.”

  Which is when I lost my temper for a second. “Damn it all, you have your orders and you’ll fulfill them! This stuff goes or I don’t. Is that clear, Spaceman First Class?”

  “Yes sir, sir!” he barked, on instinct. I outranked him and there was only so much he could push. “But we’ll have to wait for—”

  “I’ll authorize it, and take full responsibility. I’m sure there are recorders on your ship that are picking this up, so there’s your certified auth. Let’s get this stuff on board.”

  Malik took a deep breath and held it, as if waiting for lighting to strike him down. None came, and he started to help me load the three matching crates into the ship, keeping silent. We finished quickly enough and I started for the passenger hatch. As much as I wanted to sit in the copilot seat, I knew it wouldn’t be allowed and I didn’t want to push my luck forcing the poor guy to break too many regulations.

  “Sir,” Malik said, in a tone of voice I was already familiar with. He had a problem.

  “Yeah?” I asked, knowing what it was before I asked.

  “The blaster, sir, Jonah, I can’t. An illegal weapon, in a side holster? It isn’t even locked down.”

  “The gun stays.”

  “On board, sir, you’ll have to put it in a passenger safe lock.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s get going, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He climbed back into the cockpit and I trundled up into the passenger area. This being a military transport ship, it wasn’t exactly lush. Acceleration couches sat lining the walls, each one with a secure storage area under the seat.

  The storage boxes were big enough for rifles, and really only designed for larger munitions then a handgun. My blaster would have rattled around in there, possibly doing some surface damage to it. Not that I would notice a few more scratches along the grip, but I saw no reason to bother.

  So I thumbed the box open and then closed, knowing Malik couldn’t see me but would register the lock cycle on his panel. As long as he thought I locked down the gun, he would be fine with it. What he didn’t know wouldn’t force me to consider hurting him.

  The engines cycled on, lifting via air jet for the first few feet. Then the thrusters cut in, softly, and we rumbled to life. The ship vibrated and tilted as Malik changed our angle of attack, nosing up against the pull of gravity. I had no windows, no way to see what was going on outside, but I didn’t need to. I knew takeoff like I knew the back of my hand.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, enjoying every second of it. The engines picked up and roared to full life. My body felt like it compressed, becoming paper thin as the vibrations increased, shattering my sense of self for an instant.

  We broke clear of atmosphere cleanly. The engines settled for a minute, and I felt the lurch to weightlessness. I kept count in my head and ended up only a few seconds off. The engines cut back in and internal gravity settled over my body, dragging me back down.

  The ship accelerated, providing that funny feeling that always accompanies travelers in artificial gravity. The pitch of the engines told me we were moving, speeding up, but inside the ship I could feel no actual sign of it. The gravity field cancelled out and kept us all at one Earth standard.

  Maybe it was because I had spent so much time dealing with them, but artificial gravity fields felt artificial. There were subtle clues, if you knew what to look for. The fields just felt off, and it took me a second to settle into myself again.

  Gravity fields, engines and all, had helped us expand out through space. But the bigger the ship, the less they could use them. You couldn’t use gravity as a raw engine for anything bigger than the smallest of crafts, or the forces when you turned would rip a ship apart.

  So medium-sized ships like this, able to carry twenty or less, only used them as environmental fields to keep passengers safe, and to help with higher acceleration. Bigger ships, like the co
mmand-class cruiser we headed toward, would use the fields the same way, not able to really let the engines incorporate the fields to push more than a smidge. Smaller, single-person fighters could engage gravity engines for a short push, but normally kept the interior gravity off unless the ship was making such a hard velocity shift that you needed the field to stay alive.

  The command ship wasn’t far beyond the moon and we made good time, Malik being a good pilot and keeping us on the closest course possible. Before I grew fidgety we were docking, our gravity field snapping off so it wouldn’t interfere with the larger ship’s own doings.

  Malik hit the doors and managed to meet me before I could climb out. He was good. I made a note of him in my head and gave him a nod as I passed. Normally I would’ve stopped and chatted, talked about the flight plan and whatnot. Not this time. Malik seemed to understand, at least, nodding back and standing at attention with his helmet under his arm.

  There was a young kid waiting for me as I walked off the ship. Had to be Mills. He had the look, that nervous glance, the underlying steel just starting to form with experience.

  “Captain Madison—” Mills started, but I cut him off with a shake of my head.

  “Jonah.”

  “Jonah,” he corrected, “we should go talk to the General.”

  “We should. Where is she? Where’d they take her?”

  “The General can discuss that with you,” Mills told me, turning sharply and starting to walk away.

  I grabbed him arm and turned him back to me, being none too polite about it. I wasn’t in the mood for games, protocol, or niceties.

  “Mills,” I told him, staring hard into his eyes, “you’ll tell me what you know - what you know,” I repeated clearly, “as we walk. Understood?”