The Warden frowned. “The coordinates are right. But this doesn’t look like the friendly, low-tech world I visited my first year out of the academy.”
Quantum’s antennae twirled. “That was over a hundred of your solar years ago. As we’ve learned since entering this era, quite a lot has changed.”
“Apparently.” The Warden didn’t add that he hadn’t found much to be for the better. “Let’s go see what’s what.”
A mosquito-like corporate interceptor flew out to head them off. “Approaching ship, please identify yourself and state your business on Nu Terra V.”
“This is the Ranger VII. We are here to take part in the Earth Day Festival.”
The corporate pilot’s voice came over the coms after a short pause. “Please specify. Are you here for the shopping and entertainment, or are you here to visit the Shrine?”
The Warden raised an eyebrow. “The Shrine? Isn’t Nu Terra covered in Earth Shrines?”
The interceptor pilot laughed. “Where have you been, Ranger VII? Most of the shrines were bought out over the past fifty years. The only one left is in the Deeznu Corporate Zone. If you want to go there, you’ll need to dock with a Deeznu freighter and buy a visitor’s pass. That’ll entitle you to land in the DCZ and give you access to all Deeznu eateries, activity centers, and retail outlets. Transmitting the coordinates now… Happy shopping!”
Quantum gave the Warden what he interpreted to be a dirty look. “Your Earth Day Festival seems to be nothing more than an excuse to indulge in excessive commerce.”
The Warden pulled on his suit’s skullcap and eye-concealing visor. “So it would seem.”
After purchasing the Deeznu visitor’s pass (at quite a hefty sum), they landed at the specified corporate zone’s starport. Quantum suggested they turn around and go back to the Frontier, even if it meant running across more space pirates. But the Warden had a burr under his saddle and wouldn’t let the degeneration of the Earth Day Festival go without first getting some answers.
Disembarking, they set out to find the last Earth Shrine on Nu Terra V. The DCZ was a terrestrial version of the corporate blockade orbiting the planet. Every building was alive with animatronic or holographic advertising, and every street was lined with markets, vendors, stores, bodegas, restaurants, eateries, VR parlors, gift shops, and every other commercial venue one might imagine.
Where the Warden remembered carols and hymns, he now heard sales pitches and jingles. The scent of flash-fried, mass-produced fast food replaced the aromas of homemade, fresh-baked goods. The décor which had once celebrated the origins of a unified people was now dedicated solely to which venue touted the best sales. Worst of all were the people themselves.
Instead of smiling faces greeting them with hails of, “Happy Earth Day!” or, “Be blessed, brother!” the Warden and Quantum were bombarded with shouts of, “Out of the way! Can’t you see I’m in a hurry!” or, “Look out! Big boxes coming through!” Though all the folks seemed quite affluent, judging by the copious amounts of shopping bags and boxes each of them carried, not a soul looked remotely happy.
Quantum sighed. “Are you sure you would not rather go find some space pirates?”
The Warden scowled. “Come on. I see the shrine up ahead.”
The towering Earth Shrine was an elegant white pagoda with sweeping lines and graceful arches surrounded by tall pines, firs, and spruces. As they drew near, the Warden saw that the place was in poor repair and the evergreens needed tending. It was also the only place along the busy street devoid of patrons. Outside the gate stood a faded sign: EARTH DAY PAGEANT! COME AND EXPERIENCE THE JOY AND PEACE OF A TRADITIONAL EARTH DAY CELEBRATION! (CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOMED)
The courtyard was occupied by a handful of individuals singing as they built a temporary stage, sewed theatrical curtains, and painted large canvas backdrops. These happy workers were supervised by a tall, dark-skinned woman with elegant coils of graying black hair trailing down the back of her long white vestments.
She turned to face them with a warm smile. “Hello, and welcome to the Earth Shrine. I am the Guardian, but you can call me Octavia. What joy can our humble shrine offer you, strangers?”
The Warden returned the woman’s smile, relieved to finally see some shadow of the holiday cheer he had hoped to find on this world. “Hello, Miss Octavia. I’m the Star Warden, this is my friend Quantum. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Nu Terra V, and I was hoping you could tell me exactly what happened to Earth Day.”
Octavia tilted her head. “The Star Warden? The man out of time and space? Shouldn’t you be on the Frontier, engaging in some mythic act of derring-do?”
“We’re on holiday,” Quantum said.
With a chuckle, the Guardian invited them to walk with her in the Shrine’s well-tended garden. She told how the festival on Nu Terra V had become so famous that people from all over the galaxy would come to celebrate, bringing their money with them. As the shrines and the population grew ever wealthier from these annual events, it wasn’t long before the world’s leaders decided to extend the festival, first by an extra week, and within a decade by another month, until finally, Nu Terra V “celebrated” Earth Day year-round.
“This was just the beginning,” Octavia continued as they reached the high-ceilinged sanctuary at the Shrine’s heart. Beautiful, animated 3D images of Earth and the Sol system hung in the air of the polished ivory room. “It didn’t take long for the corporations to see how much money could be made by throwing their hats into the Earth Day ring. And the world leaders, already wealthier than our ancestors could have ever dreamed, saw the opportunity offered by corporate partnerships. They let the wolves in the door.”
The Warden folded his arms. “In less than a century those partnerships turned into buyouts… turned into that out there.”
Octavia looked at the slow-spinning holographic Earth and smiled sadly. “Yes. And now we are the last independent shrine on this planet… But not for long.”
The Warden raised his chin. “How’s that?”
“The land upon which the Shrine sits is owned by the original colonial charter, held in trust. That trust recently dissolved when the local government transitioned into the Deeznu Corporate Zone. We have three days to raise seven million credits to purchase the land, or the Deeznu Corporation will annex it. Then this shrine will go the way of all the others, just another money-making attraction.”
“Three days. Earth Day. That’s why you’re putting on the pageant.”
Octavia nodded. “It’s our last hope. So far, we’ve raised almost sixty thousand credits, but we are running out of time.”
The Warden exchanged glances with Quantum. The alien gave a resigned shrug. “What can we do to help?”
A volunteer stepped into the well chamber. “Octavia? A lady from the press is here to see you.”
The Guardian smiled. “As it happens, your arrival is quite timely. We need the media to help spread the word far and wide about our pageant. Perhaps you could share your memories of what Earth Day once meant with our visiting journalist?”
“Be happy to. And Quantum and I know our way around hand tools, so we can pitch in with the chores.”
“Thank you both so much.” Octavia led them to the courtyard where a blonde woman in a stylish green jumpsuit stood in the glow of a hovering cam-bot’s lights, speaking with a pair of volunteers. “After I’ve talked with her, I’ll send her your way.”
The Warden nodded at Quantum. “Well, let’s get to work.”
“Absolutely. I often crave manual labor while on vacation. I find it far more relaxing than enjoying a good meal or taking in the local entertainment and scenery...”
Sometime later, as the Warden and Quantum raised a platform on the finished stage, the reporter came by. In a whiskey voice more suited to the blues than broadcasting, she said, “Hello. I’m Danica Stone, with the Intergalactic News Service. Might I ask you some questions?”
“Certainly.” The Warden hopped
down from the stage, smiling at the attractive woman. Her eyes were the same shade of emerald as her jumpsuit and her crooked smile was just this side of perfect, making her seem more like the girl next door than an unapproachable media goddess. “We’d be happy to talk to you.”
Miss Stone motioned the cam-bot into position where its bulbs painted them in brighter hues. Turning a smile to the artificial eye, she said, “I’ve got a surprise guest here at the Earth Shrine on Nu Terra V. Rumored to be the Last Star Warden, this mysterious man has volunteered to help with the preparations for a traditional Earth Day celebration.”
The way she stressed “traditional” gave the Warden pause, as if she were about to tell a joke. One he wouldn’t like. “Yes, that’s correct. I brought my friend Quantum to show him an Earth Day Festival like the last time I was here. But… quite a lot has changed since then.”
Miss Stone continued to smile at an unspoken joke. “So, that would have been when, exactly? Is it true what the rumors coming out of the Frontier say about you? That you were lost in time for over a century?”
The Warden nodded. “That about sums it up. Yes.”
She turned back to the camera with the equivalent of a wink. “So, you admit to being behind the times, then. What, in your opinion, could an old-school Earth Day pageant possibly offer to a modern audience? What can the Shrine present to people used to 4D holographic projection screens and VHD surround sound home theaters? How can untrained volunteers possibly put on a better show than professionally-rendered CGI characters voiced and performed by award-winning artists?”
The Warden cleared his throat. But the young lady and her audience were spared his intended lecture by a disturbance at the front gate. Five big men in dark clothing forced their way into the courtyard. They wore respirators over the lower parts of their faces and carried heavy sledges in their hands.
“Everybody out!” one of the men shouted. “Get out!”
The volunteers that hadn’t been flattened in the initial invasion scattered. Octavia moved to confront the men. “What do you want? We don’t keep money here, and our artifacts aren’t worth much by modern standards.”
The Warden and Quantum hurried to join her, though both had replaced their gun belts with tool belts. “You guys are in the wrong place,” the Warden said. “That is, unless you came to help us build sets for the pageant. In that case, glad to have you.”
The leader extended his hammer at the Warden’s face. “Ain’t going to be no pageant, stranger. So you and your blue pal best shove off before we make an example of you. Stay out of our way and nobody needs to get hurt.”
The Warden glanced at Octavia. “Guardian, you might want to get your people to cover. This is about to get ugly.”
And it did.
The Warden and Quantum waded into the sledge-wielding thugs like a pair of rock crushers in an asteroid field. Unarmed as they were, the two veterans of the Continuum War proved more than a match for ruffians used to intimidating folks by sheer size and swagger alone. In a matter of minutes, the five men tucked tail and ran or limped from the shrine.
“Shall we pursue them?” Quantum asked, wiping blood from his knuckles.
“No. Doesn’t take a genius to figure they were hired by Deeznu. Probably freelance muscle paid in cash so as to leave no paper trail, no legal strings. Nobody else has a motive to prevent the pageant.”
The Warden rubbed a growing bruise on his jaw as he surveyed the damage. The men had made use of their superior numbers to keep the Warden and Quantum occupied while still managing to destroy a significant portion of the sets and decorations. “Looks like we won the fight but lost the war.”
Octavia and the volunteers walked through the wreckage, hollow and broken expressions on their faces. “There’s no time,” the Guardian said quietly. “There’s no time to start over. And our coffers are bare…”
Danica Stone and her hovering cam-bot stepped close to the Warden. “What will you do now?”
He scowled, not having a good answer. “Something. I don’t know what just yet, but something. We’re not quitting.”
At least he had the satisfaction of seeing Danica Stone without a jaded smirk on her face.
---
“I cannot believe every store in this zone refuses our commerce,” Quantum said. “Almost as much as I cannot believe your offer to replace the damaged sets out of our dwindling funds.”
The Warden shrugged. After the row, they had helped Octavia and the volunteers make the most of the aftermath. Danica had departed to edit her footage.
“I’m not surprised. Deeznu has an effective monopoly here. Word is out that we’re trying to help the shrine, which is in direct opposition to the corporation’s agenda. So we’ll have to go further afield to buy new materials. I’ll take the Ranger back up to the freighters and buy a commerce pass to another corporate zone. In the meantime, see what you can do here.”
“Very well. Just try to stay out of trouble.”
At the starport, the Warden was unpleasantly surprised to find someone waiting for him on the Ranger VII’s launch pad. “Can I help you, Miss Stone? I thought you’d have gotten enough footage at the shrine to finish your hit piece on ‘old-school’ traditions.”
“I suppose I deserve that. But I’d like to know more. More about you, certainly, but also more about what’s going on here. I’ll admit the only reason I came to Nu Terra V was to interview you, and I couldn’t care less about the shrine or the festival. But now—”
“How did you know I’d be here?” The Warden paused before climbing the gangplank.
The reporter gave a small smile. “Let me go with you and I’ll tell you what I know. Then you can fill in the gaps. Maybe together we can see the bigger picture.”
The Warden frowned, gave a curt nod. “Come on. But this’ll be a short flight. Even shorter if I think you’re trying to play me.”
“Fair enough.”
As they strapped in and the Warden began the pre-flight system checks, Danica said, “I heard you say something about those thugs working for Deeznu. What if I said you were wrong about that?”
The Warden raised an eyebrow behind his visor. “Okay. You’ve got my attention.”
“I believe they may have been hired by Argonaut. The same company that, technically, I work for. INS is a subsidiary of Argos Entertainment, which is a branch of the uber-corporation. Somebody at Argos sent me the tip about your ship entering the corporate blockade. By the time I entered the system, they had fed me the info about you looking into the Earth Shrine situation.”
Firing up the Ranger VII’s rocket thrusters for liftoff, the Warden said. “Why would Argonaut want the pageant to fail if Deeznu will reap the benefits?”
Danica visibly struggled against the G-forces as the ship rose from the launch pad and climbed into the planet’s atmosphere. “Because… they want me to paint Deeznu as the big bad in a David versus Goliath story… If Deeznu is tied up in a PR fiasco during the height of the shopping season… it could mean a windfall for Argonaut’s final fiscal quarter of the year.”
The Warden chewed on this, but not for long.
Blaster bolts arced past the ship.
“Looks like whoever sent those thugs to the shrine just upped their game and their budget.” Blue sky faded into eternal night as he pushed the ship higher into the upper atmosphere. The Ranger VII was designed for space flight and combat, whereas the attacker was a sub-orbital gunship, built for air support and dogfights in terrestrial warfare. “Strange to find one of those on a planet dedicated to commerce and entertainment.”
Danica’s face faded to white. “You really have no clue just how cutthroat the corporate wars are, do you?”
“Nope.” The Warden pulled the yoke hard, knifing across the climbing attacker’s path. The enemy craft fired again, but the Ranger VII spiraled and accelerated, moving between the fiery bolts without taking so much as a scratch.
When the gunship maneuvered to reacquire a pursuit ang
le, it turned onto its back, seemed to freeze in midair, and fell in a widening spiral. The sudden shift in G-forces coupled with the change in atmospheric pressures stalled the sky-ship’s engines.
The Warden pushed the Ranger VII into a nosedive, chasing the falling craft back into the lower atmosphere at supersonic speeds.
Danica spoke through clenched teeth. “What are you doing? You’re going to get us killed!”
The Warden focused on the target. “Got to get close enough to fire grapple lines so we can stop that fall. If that ship hits anywhere populated, it might as well be a bomb.”
The plummeting ship’s pilot didn’t help matters. Panicked or discombobulated, his attempts to regain control only caused the craft to behave more erratically.
A voice came over the ship’s coms: “Ranger VII, this is DCZ air traffic control. Break off your approach or we will fire on you.”
“Sorry, DCZ control. If I do that, a lot of folks down there are about to have a very bad day.” Ignoring the sweat crowding the corners of his eyes, the Warden continued to accelerate until the targeting computer locked onto the falling ship.
Flicking the fire-control and hitting the trigger, he sent four harpoons trailing DuraSteel grapple lines into the target’s hull. One of these carried a small EMP charge, shutting down the gunship’s engines and controls.
“Got him!”
---
In a wide, marsh-edged clearing several kilometers from the DCZ, the Warden and Danica pulled the pilot from the rescued ship. Though he wasn’t happy about the minor damage to his craft, the man was grateful his intended targets had saved his life.
In response to Danica’s questions, the mercenary admitted, “I was hired through back channels to harass you on takeoff. Just a show of force to scare you away from the planet. I sure wasn’t expecting to engage in a dogfight.”
The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1 Page 17
