The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1

by Jason McCuiston

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “He refused to listen—”

  Coppenger stood. “Quite all right, Janet. I’m sure we’d all like to hear what the Last Star Warden has to say.”

  “I doubt that very much,” the Warden said through clenched jaws. But he waited until the receptionist had departed and closed the doors.

  “What can we do for you, Warden?” A heavyset man of Asian-Earth descent casually glanced at the gold pocket chrono he’d just withdrawn from his silken waistcoat. “It isn’t every day that a living legend barges into a meeting of the First Five Citizens.”

  “I take it you’re Mr. Chen?”

  The man gave a smiling nod. “At your service. And I assume you’ve already met the Chief Constable. This is Augustus Sandoval, the president of the C-7 Mining Consortium, and these two young ladies are Ariadne Patel, the head of our operations fleet, and Portia Feldu, our esteemed mayor.”

  The Warden nodded at the overly polite introductions. Although the women were attractive for their apparent ages, Coppenger was the youngest of the group by at least two decades. “Pleased to meet you all. But I’m afraid there is something terribly wrong going on here. People are disappearing and no one seems to notice.”

  Coppenger raised an eyebrow. “Are you still on about this mysterious… Ryan, was it? I’ve already assured you, Warden, the man never existed.”

  “Really? Well, the same thing happened to my friend Quantum.”

  “Your friend?”

  The Warden pounded his fists on the table. “Yes. The alien who accompanied me here. You met him just a few hours ago on the landing pad.”

  Coppenger frowned. “I’m sorry, Warden. But you were alone. Look…”

  A holographic recording from a security camera appeared above the table. It clearly showed the Warden meeting with Coppenger and his armed retinue. Quantum was nowhere to be seen.

  “That’s… impossible.”

  “You don’t look well, Warden,” Mayor Feldu said with a pitying smile. “Let us help you. I’d be more than honored to put you up in a suite at the City of Gold hotel as my personal guest. You would not want for the least little thing, and we could have a medical bot sent to you in the most discreet of manners.”

  The Warden stiffened and looked at the blankly concerned faces. “Thank you. I am fine… I must have been mistaken. I apologize for the interruption.”

  Coppenger smiled, extended his arm to guide the Warden back to the doors. “Think nothing of it. It was our pleasure. And please, if you need anything, anything at all, don’t hesitate to reach out to any one of us. We only want what is best for Cibola Seven, and that includes what is best for our guests.”

  The Warden nodded at the young man’s deadpan smile.

  Outside the Constabulary, the Warden started walking in a random direction. He was aware that no fewer than five constables were now following him while trying not to look like it. After changing directions and levels twice more, he raised this estimate to a dozen, half of which were plain-clothes or undercover operatives.

  He was being watched.

  “Perhaps going to the First Five wasn’t the brightest idea. Now they know I’m onto whatever it is they’re up to…” He stopped on a promenade and looked over a balcony at the throngs swimming between casinos and show bars. He realized he was looking for Ramirez in that crowd and shook his head. “Maybe I am cracking up… Just like Maximo Ryan…”

  Realizing this was his only clue, the Warden went to a coffee house, slid into a secluded booth, and pulled up the recorded message on his chrono. He spent the next several standard hours drinking coffee and poring over every digitized detail. He magnified, enhanced, and extrapolated every frame until he finally found something.

  In the background, when Ryan got up and walked around the room, for a split second a pink neon glow reflected on a picture frame. Ryan must have opened the curtains for a quick look, and in that moment the reflection of a sign was captured in the glass: ROXY’S ROCKETGIRLS.

  Exhausted, his nerves frayed, the Warden at last had a starting point to begin his search for the missing Ryan. He could only hope this clue would eventually lead to finding Quantum, alive and well.

  Based on the angle of reflection in the enhanced image, and the information gleaned from the colony’s directory, he deduced that the room where the message was recorded should be on the seventh floor of the Get It Inn, across the street from the Roxy’s Rocketgirls burlesque theater in the Red Light District.

  It took two more hours for the Warden to give his watchers the slip before he could follow up on his lead…

  The Red Light District was a multi-tiered conglomeration of brothels, skin shows, hourly motels, 4D arcades, streetwalkers, and body-bot boutiques. Just sharing the same atmosphere as the performers and their patrons made the Warden’s skin crawl. He wasn’t normally all that prudish, though he did have a certain level of disdain for the commercialized trivialization of intimacy. But something about the neon glare on the wet asphalt and the sickly sweet scent of perfume, pheromones, secretions, and incense hanging on the muggy air made him want to leave the nebula and never look back.

  But he couldn’t do that, would never do that. Not without Quantum.

  They’d been through far too much together. Starting out as mortal enemies during the Continuum War, they had become the best of friends since being thrown into the far future. And while the Star Warden was a man out of time, he had to remind himself that Quantum was also a man out of space, trapped in this dimension with very little hope of ever seeing his home or loved ones again.

  “And now, he’s just gone.” The Warden grunted as he stepped past the wet moaning sounds emanating from the alley outside the Get It Inn. Shaking his head, he entered the narrow building’s lobby, thankful for the gloves and sealed spacesuit he wore.

  “What’s your pleasure, stranger?” The bored, pock-faced and frizzy-haired woman behind the counter chewed a lump of aphro-spice, smacking it against her too-red lips and ogling him with her too-shadowed eyes. “Looking for some company? ’Cause I can make that happen.”

  The Warden activated his chrono and brought up the image of Chief Ryan. “Official business. I’m looking for this man. I have good reason to believe he rented a room on the seventh floor less than a standard day ago.”

  The woman frowned, waved at the hologram. “Maybe. But that ain’t no connie uniform you got on, stranger. Ain’t no law on Cibola Seven but our own, so shove off or rent a room.”

  The Warden gnashed his teeth as he shut down the image. “How much for a room on the seventh floor?”

  The woman smiled, smacked her spice again. “Now that’s more like it, stranger. You let me know if you get lonely up there…”

  The Warden had no intention of using the procured room. Upon exiting the filthy lift on the seventh floor, he made his way to the front side of the building. He shouldered past amorous couples and trios bumping along the narrow corridors, headed for their rented lodgings.

  Based upon the information he had extrapolated from Ryan’s recorded message, the video had been made in one of three rooms. Using his visor’s thermal imager, the Warden determined that one of these was occupied by a group of active individuals, another by a couple, and the third had a single occupant pacing relentlessly around the small bedroom.

  The thermal readout indicated this occupant to be a large human male.

  The Warden returned his visor to normal viewing and pressed the door’s call button. “Chief Ryan? This is the Star Warden. I believe you called for my help.”

  The mechanical iris on the door’s security loop opened. A raspy voice rattled through the dinged-up call system. “I don’t believe you… You’re an agent… an assassin… sent by… him!”

  The Warden took a deep breath. He rested his hands on the hilts of his belted Comets. “I don’t have time for this. You sent a message asking me to come and help you investigate murders and missing bodies. Well, I’m here and my
friend has disappeared. So, either you open this door, or I blast it open.”

  The callbox squawked. The magnetic lock clunked in the door and it slid open. The haggard, hulking form of Maximo Ryan stood a meter on the other side, a heavy blaster pistol gripped in the gnarled and bloody fist at his side. The man looked even older than he had in the video message, his face grubbier, his eyes wilder and lined in dark circles.

  “Come in.” Ryan waved the blaster as an invitation or a command.

  The Warden stepped in, keeping the strange man at arm’s length and his hands near his own weapons. As soon as Ryan had secured the door, the Warden said, “All right. Start talking. What is going on here?”

  Ryan’s cracked and stubbled face broke into a disconcerting grin. “It is you. It’s really you. You really came!” The big man shuddered, put his left hand to his watery eyes. “I can’t believe you came. Thank the Cosmos, you came!”

  The Warden scanned the room while Ryan regained his composure, or what was left of it. The small chamber smelled of body odor and spoiled food. The remnants of at least half a dozen takeaway meals occupied the surface of the two nightstands, the small table, and the foot of the unmade bed beside a portable computer. The digital device projected an elaborate display of glowing holographic images on the wall above the bed’s headboard. The curtains were closed and the lights were out, the only other illumination from the floor lamps in the tiny, open lavatory.

  “Who were you talking about?” The Warden turned his attention back to the armed madman. “Who did you think sent me? What did you mean by him?”

  Ryan uttered a bitter cluck of laughter and moved to the window. Giving a furtive glance through the heavy purple curtains, he said, “The God of Cibola. He controls everything here. He controls us. And, I think—I think he is going mad… Just like the rest of us…”

  The Warden gnashed his teeth, fighting down the urge to disarm Ryan and throttle him until he started making sense. He shook his head, trying to clear his own thoughts. I’m tired and frustrated. I’m worried about Quantum, and I can’t help but feel like I’ve already failed him. Already lost him…

  Ryan turned from the window, the blaster still in his hand. “When you chased me in the alley, I thought they had sent you. The First Five, the Fist of the Mad God…” He chuckled and licked his lips. “Yes, I quite like that, The Fist of the Mad God. Nice turn of phrase, that…”

  The Warden raised his chin. “That was you in the alley? That man you attacked, who was he? Why did you attack him?”

  Ryan’s mirth vanished in swift, fiery eyed rage. “That was no man! He was an agent for the God of Cibola! He was following me, wanted to find me here with all my evidence. He would have killed me and taken it to them, the Five, to secure their little conspiracy… Well, I say little, but they have the entire galaxy by the throat with their control of the lithium… And the Mad God controls them…”

  The Warden glanced at the array of digital images projected against the wall. He saw news stories, public photos of the First Five Citizens—including Maximo Ryan, himself, group photos, shipping manifests, credit reports, crime reports, and personnel files connected by glowing strands of red light. All these bits of information radiated outward like a spider’s web from an image of The Old Number One Mine.

  A honking warble from the street below drew Ryan’s attention back to the window.

  “The constables!” Ryan turned to face the Warden, his hate-filled face lined in pink neon. “You led them to me!” He raised his blaster.

  The Warden drew his own weapons. “No! They must have followed me without my knowledge!”

  Ryan fired.

  As did the Warden.

  In the span of a heartbeat, the darkened room blazed with galvanized plasma. Ryan’s hulking body slammed into and through the window, dragging the heavy curtains with it to the wet pavement seven stories below.

  The Warden stood in the filthy room, now awash in the glow of pink and purple neon. His Comets smoking in his hands, he saw that Ryan had not aimed at him, but at the now destroyed computer deck which had projected the gathered images on the wall.

  The madman had only been trying to cover his tracks. Trying to protect his secrets.

  “I tried to warn him… Didn’t I?” The Warden shook with guilt and uncertainty. He looked at the weapons in his hands, despising the lethal training which had made him so fast, so accurate.

  Shouted orders from the street below broke his stupor. Holstering his pistols, the Warden bolted from the room. He knew the constables would be watching the elevator in the lobby, and at least one fire team would be swarming up each of the two stairwells. He ran for the nearest stairs and headed for the roof.

  Bursting into the relatively fresh, misty air, the Warden was blasted by the searchlight from a constabulary tactical shuttle. Six armored constables fast-roped onto the roof from the hovering vehicle. A loudspeaker warbled something about surrender and arrest.

  The Warden charged into the descending constables, catching the first man before he could disengage from his roped harness. Sweeping his legs from under him, the Warden slammed the constable to the ground and punched him in the throat, between his helmet and vest.

  Leaping from the downed man, he drove his elbow into the armored solar plexus of the next officer. Grabbing the winded constable’s arm, the Warden twisted, flipping him into the next man in line.

  The Warden knew he could use his Comets to end this fight in a hurry. But after killing Ryan, he couldn’t bring himself to touch the weapons. Whatever else was going on here, these constables were just doing their job.

  A job they were good at, apparently. After his initial success, it didn’t take long for the remainder of the team to surround him and hit him with stun weapons. The Warden shuddered under the blast of neural-disrupting charges, his consciousness slipping away as painful spasms ripped through his body…

  ---

  The Warden woke in pain. He opened his eyes and stared through the scratched lens of his visor, felt waves of soreness in his arms, back, chest, and neck. When he sat up, he realized the worst of the agony nested in his skull.

  He groaned.

  “You’re awake.” A woman’s voice from the shadows. “Earlier than I expected.”

  The Warden turned in the direction of the words, tapped his visor, waited for the pixelated image to resolve in enhanced illumination. He thought he was dead.

  Or at the very least, communing with the dead.

  An olive-skinned woman sat in a swivel chair at the controls of a small shuttlecraft. The pale glow of the nebula outside the forward screen limned her utility spacesuit and dark hair in shades of violet and pink.

  She looked very much like Ramirez.

  “Who are you? Where are we?” The Warden rubbed the bruises on his arms and shoulders, trying to convince himself of the reality of his situation. He noted that his holsters were empty but felt only a sense of relief at this observation. Checking his chrono, he noted that he’d been out for about three standard hours. “What happened?”

  The woman got up and fetched a med-kit from the shuttle’s wall. “I’m Maria Sandoval. My father runs the mining operation.” She knelt beside him, fishing out a hypo-syringe from the kit. “Here, this will boost your body’s regenerative abilities. I didn’t want to dose you while you were out. Sometimes unconsciousness can turn into a coma with these old nanites.”

  The Warden grunted, studying the lean lines of her face. Just like Ramirez, she was pretty, in her early thirties, with a sharp look in her dark eyes. “You’re… helping me? I should be in custody, locked away somewhere beneath the constabulary right now. Or worse.”

  Maria smiled as she administered the hypo. “Probably. But I’ve been following your movements since you arrived on Cibola Seven, and as soon as I heard a tac-team was dispatched to bring you in, I conned my way into piloting the prisoner transport. I was able to get you off the colony, but I couldn’t do much about the beating the connie
s gave you while you were down. Apparently, they didn’t like the way you resisted arrest.”

  The Warden nodded, rubbed his face with his hands. He was relieved by her confession of following him. At least he wasn’t seeing dead people. But that didn’t change the fact that he had just killed the man he had come to Cibola Seven to help. “No less than I deserve…”

  He couldn’t shake the image of Maximo Ryan’s wild-eyes staring at him as he blasted him out of that dingy flophouse room. The madman seemed to move in slow motion as the fiery plasma bolts hit him in the chest, lifted him from the floor, and hurled him through the window. Ryan’s face was blank, emotionless. That lack of accusation, of any sense of betrayal was even worse than if there had been a look of hatred in his eyes.

  The Warden cleared his throat. “Off the colony? So where are we? And why are you doing this? Shouldn’t you be part of your father’s conspiracy? Aren’t you the legacy of the First Five Citizens?”

  Maria shrugged and stood to pace the small cabin. “Something’s… not right on Cibola Seven. It just started a few weeks ago, but I think it’s getting worse. And fast… People have gone missing, and I don’t mean just disappearing.” She fixed him with a frightened look. “I mean it’s as if they never existed. Nobody, not even their family and friends remember them. And somehow, they’re even wiped from the databases and registries… I’m terrified.”

  The Warden nodded. “You lost someone?”

  Maria rubbed her brow. “My… fiancé or husband. I think; I can’t be sure… I wake up sometimes, knowing that someone should be in the bed beside me, but there isn’t… For the briefest of moments, I can see him smiling at me or snoring at the ceiling. I can smell him, feel his warmth…”

  She wiped at her left eye and fixed the Warden with a resolute glare. “And then… he’s just gone. But I know in my bones that he was there. I know it. And when I get away from Cibola Seven for a while, I can sometimes… catch actual memories…”