Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “Love it up here,” he said, leaned over the railing, hair ruffled by the faint breeze. Below, the lake spread to all sides. Above, the artificial lights couldn’t quite hide the stars. “Shows me exactly what I’ve accomplished while reminding me it’s nothing but a toy.”

  “I’m going back to Skylon,” Rada said.

  “It is a bit of a walk, isn’t it? You’d better move your feet.”

  She stared at the back of his head. “I’ll need a ride.”

  “I expect you will.” He gazed over his domain. “Good luck getting one.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Rada exhaled slowly. “You mean to stop me from leaving the Hive.”

  Toman turned halfway from the lighthouse rail to watch her in his peripheral vision. “I’m not going to stop you from doing anything.”

  “You own this entire place. You don’t have to lock me up to keep me from leaving. All you have to do is prevent any ships from taking me onboard.”

  “Yes, that sounds plausible.”

  “I’ll hire my own ship. Someone out there won’t be afraid of you. And if you won’t let them land, I’ll tell the entire system that you’ve kidnapped me.”

  He snorted. “Kidnapping? No court would ever convict me.”

  She took a step toward the rails. “It’s not about the law, though, is it? It’s about perception. You’ll look like a tyrant at best. At worst…”

  His shoulders rose and fell. “This is exactly why I don’t want you out there. You’re a liability. Apt to do our cause more harm than good.”

  “The only way to stop me is to lock me up. Either that or kill me.”

  At last, Toman turned from the rails, disgust creasing his face. “Are you trying to make me into a tyrant? We want the same things, Rada.”

  “No, we don’t. You want the ship. But if getting it proves to be too much hassle, you’re happy to let someone else have its secrets, knowing you’ll have access to them in time.” She stared him in the eye. “Me? I want justice for my friends. Vengeance against the people who casually destroyed them. And it will be mine.”

  He looked up and past her. He appeared to be suppressing a smile. “I won’t keep you against your will. But please, when you’re out there and your finger’s hovering over the button? Remember that I could have.”

  “I’ll keep the Hive out of it.” She swept her hair from her face. “Guess I’d better go find a ship.”

  “No need,” he said. “You’ll be taking the Tine.”

  -o0o-

  They launched later that day, the same crew that had rescued her from Nereid: Lonnie the pilot, Simm the … whatever he was. Rada didn’t take her escort as a compliment. They were there to keep tabs on her.

  Well, they could watch all they wanted. She had work to do. The first step was to confirm Rigel, the Dison Concerns agent, was still on Skylon. The second step would be to arrange a meet. Not as Rada, of course: Rada was supposed to be dead, murdered on the surface of Nereid.

  Connecting to the net from an in-flight ship was a royal pain in the ass. Rada had an image of the net downloaded to her device, but it was far from complete. When you needed to grab something from the wider net, the ship had to Needle it to the nearest habitat or station, where the inquiry would be processed and then Needled back to the ship. For security reasons, Rada was sticking with the Hive’s connection, and as they drew away, her sends began to take minutes to travel back and forth.

  She spent the delays working on her cover story and combing through the net footprint connected to Rigel’s contact info. This footprint was sparse, especially for the headhunter for a major spacefaring company. She dug deeper, growing increasingly frustrated by the minutes elapsing between each query and the return of that information from the Hive.

  After an hour of listening to her muttered sighing and swearing, Simm turned from his seat at the controls. “What’s up?”

  “It’s this guy I’m after,” Rada said. “I’m trying to confirm he’s still at Skylon, but I can barely confirm he exists.”

  “Let me see?” he said. The request was a formality: the ship’s computer was processing all her device’s transmissions, meaning Simm could page through them as he pleased. Within five minutes, he looked up from his device, a funny look on his face. “I’ve figured out why you can’t find him. It’s because he doesn’t exist.”

  “Simm,” Rada said. “I met him. Shook his hand. He’s real.”

  “I have no doubt you interacted with another living person. What I’m saying is the identity that person claimed does not exist.”

  “No way. The whole thing was a setup, wasn’t it? There was no Rigel. He probably didn’t even work for Dison. He knew I’d applied to them and used their name to buy my trust. To get me to drop some details about what we’d found.”

  “That would appear to be the most likely explanation.”

  “What are the others?”

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I’m merely reminding us that there may be other options.”

  Rada rubbed her face. “Why didn’t the LOTR figure this out?”

  “I don’t know that, either. From what I’ve gathered, their focus has been on identifying the ship that attacked you.” He bent over his device. “I’ll send them a request for more information.”

  “If I’m the only one ‘Rigel’ gave his contact info to, then if I message him, he’ll know it’s me. And I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Bummer for you,” Lonnie said. “So have you got a destination for me or not?”

  Rada stared at the screen and its view of silent vacuum. “Skylon. It’s the only lead we’ve got.”

  Someone at LOTR got back to Simm, informing him that they’d been exploring Dison Concerns as the potential attacker rather than focusing on Rigel. Since Simm’s query, they’d double-checked his conclusion and agreed the ID was false. They said they’d launch a thorough investigation.

  As the Tine tore through the gulf between the Hive’s position in the wake of Mars and Skylon’s location in orbit around Triton, Rada found herself with less and less to do. She had nowhere to go with Rigel. She scheduled a few appointments elsewhere on Skylon. To avoid being linked to the Tine, Simm rerouted these messages through a slew of sources on their way to the station.

  She was no longer particularly tempted to drink. That part of her life felt like a closed chapter, a sealed door. She did, however, found herself struck by sudden bolts of sadness and anguish that came and went with the caprice of coastal storms. For the most part, she was able to slip off to her bunk when these approached, but once, she bumped into Simm in the hall mid-cry.

  He extricated himself, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

  She wiped her eyes, averting her face. “It’s fine. I just fell eyeball-first into a pineapple.”

  “Well,” he said. “Right.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rada took a juddering breath. “I’ve been thinking about Nereid too much.”

  “You believe you should have died there,” Simm stated.

  “Everyone else did.”

  “But you didn’t. The brain wants to assign meaning to all things. But for many things—maybe all things—there is no meaning attached.”

  Rada laughed, jarring loose a final pair of tears. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

  “You shouldn’t feel guilt for surviving,” he said. “The only people who are guilty are the ones who killed your friends.”

  In Rada’s experience, consoling advice was about as useful as a spherical dinner plate. Yet she got to her bunk feeling lighter. More … defined. As if she’d been a block of raw marble that a sculptor had chiseled down to reveal the true figure within.

  She couldn’t erase her feelings. She could no longer afford to numb them with pig. They were what they were—yet she couldn’t let them control her, either. Not just yet.

  Not when it was time to find out who had killed her friends.

  -o0o-

  They made port at Skylon.
Prior to arrival, Simm had arranged for the record to note that she had been delivered by another vessel that landed shortly after the Tine. This, he’d tacitly admitted, had required some hefty bribes. Before installing her in the cargo box to be delivered to the other ship, he gave her the contact for the Tine.

  “Intending to stick around?” she said.

  He turned down the corners of his mouth. “I intend to do whatever Toman tells me. Good luck.”

  She climbed in the box and let herself be delivered. Inside the port, Skylon smelled as acidic as always. Rada crossed the transparent floor to the elevators without looking down.

  She wore a hat and UV-blocking glasses. Even so, she felt exposed. If Rigel spotted her, she expected she’d be kidnapped. Taken somewhere quiet and never heard from again. Her first appointment was with an off-the-record cham in the middle levels. Generally, there wasn’t a lot of dirt on habitats, yet the level did its best to be grungy. Two-story buildings filled all available space between the floor and the ceiling. Steady pedestrian traffic flowed down the tight streets. Rada felt like she was holding her breath all the way to the cham’s.

  She didn’t go all-out. Just enough mods to throw off photo recognition: a bump to the bridge of her nose; ears pinned back a few degrees; a thicker jawline; green lenses for her eyes. After, the chameleon gave her a mirror to inspect herself. All of the mods were temporary injections or sculpts that wouldn’t last long, but the face in the mirror was startling, uncanny. She couldn’t tell if it was good or bad.

  The cham let her grab a quick nap in the recovery room while the machines smoothed her face. Rada got up at six PM station time. Perfect time to hit the bars. The machines had eliminated her swelling and discoloration. She tossed her hat and shades and headed up to the level that housed Shine.

  The elevator doors opened on the tree-lined plaza. Rada took a deep breath and stepped out. As she strode past the men on the benches, most of them gave her a look, but it was typical ogling. None gave any sign that her face looked out of sorts.

  She believed her initial encounter with Rigel had been accidental. That he’d overheard them boasting about their upcoming riches, ID’d each member of the crew, and homed in on her, using her job ambitions as a point of entry. It could be his entire methodology was to slouch around bars waiting for drunken miners, salvagers, and shippers to mention something they shouldn’t. If he was a predator, this was his feeding ground—and she doubted he’d left it.

  On her way to Shine, she stopped at each bar she passed. In those with few patrons, she took a quick look around, as if searching for a friend. In the ones that were packed, she ordered a club soda, sipping steadily as she scanned the crowds.

  At first, she felt invigorated, shark-like. But as the hours dripped by, her enthusiasm faded. In time, she wound up at the Shine and camped out there for three hours. A few men approached her. She brushed them off, annoyed by the distraction. Everyone was so loud, so crude, so out of their minds they couldn’t understand how obnoxious they were. By four in the morning, disgusted and frustrated, she headed back to the apartment she’d registered under the fake ID provided to her by the LOTR.

  She woke so bleary-eyed and groggy-headed that for one panicky moment she was terrified she’d spent last night drinking pig rather than soda. She recovered fast, though, and as she waited for the hour to arrive at drink o’clock, she did a search of the local net, comparing the picture of Rigel she had from his contact info to everything posted to the Skylon network in the last week.

  She turned up one possible match in the background of a photo taken four days earlier at the Dog & Tether, a pub a few blocks from the Shine. She contemplated sending messages to the few acquaintances she had on the station, but held back. Most were out crewing ships. Besides, they knew her as Rada Pence, not as Jone Viciedo, the between-jobs sailor she was posing as.

  Rada rolled out of her room at 3:30 sharp. Not quite happy hour, but not too early for the crewmen out making the most of their limited leave. This time, she focused on the blocks around the Shine and the Dog & Tether, circulating from joint to joint. Like the first night, she eventually settled in at the Shine, eyes darting to the swinging doors whenever they parted. Around seven, with the bar starting to pick up steam, a woman entered, her smoky eyes passing over the crowd with experienced indifference. Recognition tickled Rada’s mind, but she didn’t place it until the woman headed behind the bar and greeted the harried man holding down the fort.

  The woman had been bartending on the first night she’d met Rigel.

  Rada gave her a few minutes to get in her groove, then got up and walked to the bar. She ordered a club soda with real lime, a touch that drew an appreciatively raised brow from the smoky-eyed woman.

  Before the bartender could move on, Rada slid her device across the bar. Its screen showed her contact photo of Rigel.

  The woman swung her jaw to the side. “What’s this?”

  “I’m looking for this man,” Rada said. “Do you know him?”

  “Let me guess. You’re the other woman? I got good news for you: we’re done.”

  “So you know him too well.”

  She closed one eye halfway. “Is he in trouble?”

  Rada hesitated.

  The smoky-eyed woman smiled. “Good.”

  The woman’s name was Winlan. She didn’t know where Rigel lived—they’d always gone to her place, and she didn’t know him as Rigel, but as Sirius—but she told Rada she could get him to come down to Shine. The two of them had dated very briefly between the time Rada had met him and now and their arguments were still fresh in the air.

  On her break, Winlan went to the back to give Sirius a call. She came back out front wearing an exasperated smile. As she considered Rada, though, her expression grew guarded.

  “He’s not in real trouble, is he?” Winlan said.

  “Nope,” Rada said. “Just his bosses.”

  “I can’t be involved. This is me, nothing more.” She gestured across the bar. “If this is serious—”

  “He’ll never connect you. All you have to do is be convincing.”

  The smoky-eyed woman grimaced, then nodded. “Tomorrow. Nine o’clock. If you’re not here, I won’t call him a second time.”

  Rada thanked her, finished the soda, and left straightaway. She had less than 24 hours to arm up.

  Like most (but not all) self-contained environments, Skylon wasn’t real big on firearms. Rada wasn’t sure she wanted one anyway—if all went according to plan, Rigel would never know she was there. She ran a search on her device and turned up a self-defense outlet two levels down. With it due to close later that hour, she hurried to the elevator.

  She kept it simple. A plastic springblade. A device stylus containing a tiny canister of liquid knuckles. Plastic, all-purpose ties that could be used as bracelets. And a collapsible pocket cane that could also be extended halfway, to baton-length. At the apartment, she watched a few self-defense videos and went through some basic moves, completely ignoring her wailing sense of self-consciousness.

  Rada got to Shine by eight the following evening. Winlan was already behind the bar. Rada’s nerves were on fire. A drink would have tamped them down, but her crew needed her more than she needed the liquor.

  He walked in two minutes after nine. The place was humming; Winlan didn’t notice him until he had cleared a path through the throng to lean up on the bar. He wore a suit of the same casual cut as before and a smirk begging to be tenderized with a fist. On spotting him, Winlan’s eyes went from smoky to blazing.

  She jabbed a finger at him. He made a “Who, me?” face and glanced at the men to either side of him. Another few seconds and he was yelling, too, but the bar was much too loud for Rada to make out the words. The two shouted back and forth, lost in the chatter and laughter, the clouds of vaporized chemicals swirling toward the ceiling. Another employee stomped in from behind the bar and got in Rigel’s face. Winlan tossed up her hands, pointed to the side of the bar, and str
ode away. Rigel followed her out of sight.

  Rada rose halfway from her chair, but she couldn’t follow. Not if she wanted to maintain cover. Thirty seconds dragged by. One minute, then two. Aware she might not get a second chance, Rada stood and started for the back room.

  Rigel busted through the door. He was still wearing his smirk, but it was dangling, ready to fall with the slightest poke. As he crossed the crowded floor, Winlan appeared in the doorway, eyes boring a hole in his back. Rada threaded for the door. Halfway to it, Rigel bumped into a gnarled spacer, spilling the man’s drink. As Rigel apologized, Rada beat him to the door and walked to the corner, where she pretended to consult her device.

  Rigel made it outside and adjusted his suit collar, swearing steadily. He flipped a pill in his mouth, dry-swallowed, and headed in the direction that Skylon had long ago decided was north. It was early enough that most of the sailors hadn’t passed out yet and Rada had ample cover as she followed in Rigel’s wake. The gridded streets shot straight through a hive of bars, mod shops, and indoor/outdoor restaurants. The smell of grilled soy and prot curled down the avenues.

  A block ahead of her, Rigel crossed Split Street and passed into Old Bog’s. Rada swore and picked up the pace. Some stations meant for public habitation were planned and gridded down to the millimeter, but others were modular, with room to grow organically as new residents bought in and made the space their own. South of Split, the level was a grid. North of it, in Old Bog’s, the level had been allowed to grow as it would.

  That meant alleys. Abrupt bends in the streets. Cul-de-sacs. Rada knew it well enough to pass through it, but it was less popular with tourists and sailors. It would be a challenge to stick close enough to follow Rigel through the maze while lingering back enough to avoid being spotted.

  Rigel made a left, following the street down a long, wobbly curve. The shops persisted for a couple blocks before phasing out in favor of apartments that connected the floor to the ceiling. The honeycomb was broken up by alleys, plazas, and parks. As in most stations, much of the greenery was edible—tomatoes, beans, orange trees—pulling triple duty as decoration, food, and oxygen generators. Some was behind transparent plastic walls, available only to the residents. The ones that appeared to be public would be monitored against theft.