Edge Of The Stars_A Techno Thriller Science Fiction Novel

by Andria Stone

  As if in a trance, Millson tapped in a message for help, then gave his tablet back to Kamryn. After lifting him off the kitchen island, she carried him to a chair by the front door. Before leaving, she took his face and fingerprint images, sending them to Ohashi, plus the other data off his tablet.

  “Now we’ll have complete access to his entire network, including how to contact the Parkers, plus both locations to their weapons.” She waved the vial of AZ2 under his nose again. Millson awoke with a start.

  “Where am I?” he asked, confused and disoriented.

  “You were shot at the bar. You’re at home. You’ve sent for a doctor. Do you remember?”

  “Uh…yes, I think so.”

  “Good. Help is on the way.”

  Kamryn followed her friends out. They crossed the street to hide between buildings about 500 feet away, watching until an older woman approached Millson’s door, requesting admittance. The door swayed open.

  Kamryn gazed upward. Artificial light in the Martian dome changed to what might be called daybreak back on Terra. It would be harder to move around unnoticed in broad daylight, since their new destination would be the Parker’s ship. If it left Mars loaded with illegal weapons, one of the Parkers was sure to be a passenger. They needed to get to the Aurora Spaceport before that happened.

  Chapter 7

  Skulking around the spaceport, looking for the Citadel 76-M, proved to be a formidable task. Axel led, Mark stayed in the middle, and Kamryn functioned as the rearguard for any unlucky person who might surprise them from behind. At last, a message from Ohashi arrived on their tablets with a schematic of the spaceport, an image of the targeted ship, and the quadrant in which it might be found.

  They’d wasted time by searching two rows in the wrong area. The correct region was in the opposite direction. Getting there without being seen would present a problem, until they saw a uniformed workman exit the side of a storage building.

  Axel snuck in the door. He’d come to terms with his anger, and had pushed it aside for the moment. Having been a soldier, he knew better than to let his emotions dictate his actions. It wouldn’t happen again. Axel would unleash his anger at the right time, on the right people, then justice would be served.

  Now, it was time to concentrate. He surveyed the building's contents and saw a couple of things he could use. A few minutes later, he walked out wearing a grease-stained pair of orange coveralls and carrying a toolbox. “Follow me. From the map on the wall in there, I know where we need to go. If the ship is loaded with weapons, it will be hidden in a hangar.”

  Around the next ship, Axel spied an unmanned hover trolley, a small conveyance used for transporting baggage, tools, replacement parts, or ferrying passengers. He slid in front while Kamryn and Mark took seats in the back. Keeping to the shadows created by numerous ships, they zigzagged across the tarmac to the first hangar.

  All its doors were locked tight, but not against Axel’s augmented left hand. He easily pulled the three pins out of the back door’s hinges, then pried it open enough for them to squeeze through. The massive hangar held two ships. Neither one matched the image on their tablets, nor were they emblazoned with Citadel 76-M on their side or tail.

  On their way out, Axel put his shoulder against the large metal door, shoved it closed, and replaced the pins. It looked normal. The next hangar looked less important; however, a private passenger vehicle sat parked in front of the main entrance. After hiding the trolley, they moved up to observe the activity from the shadows of a huge pylon supporting an adjacent ship.

  The door flew open. Two men in pilot uniforms made a quick exit, got in the vehicle, and were gone before another figure appeared in the doorway.

  Victor Parker.

  Axel’s heart stopped. He’d committed this man’s plain, small-featured face to memory, would know it from a mile away or in a crowd of a thousand people. A mental image flashed in Axel’s mind: Parker. Dismembered. Suspended in the flames of hell.

  Kamryn and Mark grabbed his shoulder and Axel’s vision disappeared. “I'm all right,” he told them.

  They didn’t release him.

  “Okay. I am going to kill him, but not right away.”

  Parker ventured outside a few feet, hurling obscenities after the runaway pilots, insulting their parentage. He looked shorter than Axel or Mark, but heavier than Kamryn. Clearly no match for any of them. They watched him retreat into the hangar. He’d left the door open.

  Axel raced to the trolley, grabbed the toolbox, then turned around to run straight for the door. He heard four boots hitting the tarmac right behind him. Slowing as he approached, Axel took a deep breath before he entered.

  A lone ship sat dead center in the hangar; the Citadel 76-M. An old, flat black transport hauler, retrofitted with rail-guns and torpedo launchers. The name, painted in small timeworn letters, was still readable on its rear portside. The entry hatch stood open. Victor Parker’s irate voice drifted out of the ship.

  Axel circled the craft, on the lookout for Parker’s sister, cyborgs, clones, or anyone else. He saw no one, unless they were inside, being yelled at by Parker. A feeling of joy spread through Axel. Within minutes, one of his targets would be in his grasp. Another vision flashed in his mind of Parker’s body riddled with knife wounds, hanging upside down, bleeding to death. Axel shook his head, cleared his mind, focused on neutralizing Parker.

  He returned to the metal stairs leading to the hatch. At the top of the platform, Mark stood to the right, his back against the hull, both guns aimed at the entry. Kamryn crouched on the left, a knife in one hand, pulse gun in the other. They both nodded at Axel.

  “Hello?” Axel drawled. “Is anybody in there? It’s Tom, from Maintenance.”

  Parker’s ranting continued.

  Axel mounted the steps, poking his head inside. “Hello? Maintenance here.”

  Victor Parker came into full view. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Tom, from Maintenance. The Office sent me down here with a work order. Would you be Mr. Parker? Victor Parker?”

  “Yes, but what the—”

  The toolbox fell from Axel’s left hand as he took a step toward Parker. Axel hit him with a martial arts ‘knifehand’ strike, delivering a chop from the outer side of his hand to the carotid artery on Parker’s neck. He felt a slight tingling in his hand at the moment of impact, but the strike Parker suffered was immense. The force impacted a small surface area, which interrupted blood flow to Parker’s brain, much like squeezing a garden hose to stop the flow of water.

  Parker’s eyes rolled back. He became disorientated, dizzy, and fell where he stood, unconscious.

  Axel burst out laughing. He felt euphoric.

  Mark entered, followed by Kamryn. While they searched the ship, Axel used tape from the toolbox to cover Parker’s mouth and eyes before hogtying his wrists and ankles together behind his back. Axel flipped Parker onto his stomach, then dragged him by the heels into the first room off the entryway.

  Mark appeared in the doorway. His face was white. “Come with me.”

  Axel stepped out, slid the door shut, and trailed Mark down to the lower level. Kamryn waited for them with a look of pure horror on her face he’d never seen before. She led them to a small, dimly lit room.

  Two girls lay naked inside, one staked out spread-eagled on the floor, the other curled into a fetal position in the corner. The teenagers were glassy-eyed, mute, paying no attention to the people standing above them.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Tears gushed down Kamryn’s cheeks. “I don’t know what to do.”

  At a glance, Axel knew what this was. They all did. Human depravity. In the next mental image, he envisioned castrating Victor Parker for his crimes against women.

  ***

  Mark ushered them out of the room. “We found a cache of weapons. They’re stacked floor to ceiling everywhere down here. Then we opened this door… I suspect they’re clones, and drugged. What if the Parkers had three businesses going on
the Space Station, but also supplemented their income with an underground planetside industry of prostitution, sexual slavery, or human trafficking with clones? Can either one of you even fathom that, or am I way off base here?”

  Enraged, Kamryn ran for the stairs, shouting, “Let me at that Martian puke!”

  Mark and Axel raced to stop her.

  “Kamryn, listen to me for a minute! Please, just listen.” Mark realized he must devise a logical plan which would satisfy both his friends, or Parker would be dying an excruciating death way too soon. “What drug did you give Millson? Is there any left? Because we need it to find out if the rest of the weapons are still in the bunker, where the rest of the cyborgs and clones are, and the whereabouts of Valerie Parker. We all need to look at the big picture.”

  She slumped down on the steps. “Yes, I have more Quazar, two vials. It’s supposed to be super concentrated, it doesn’t take much.”

  “What is it?” Mark asked.

  “It’s called Q, or Quazar. I don’t know what’s in it. I didn’t make it, never took any, and didn’t give any to my friends, only bad guys. What difference does it make? I’m surprised it hasn’t expired. Do chemicals have a shelf life?”

  “It depends,” Mark said. “But don’t use all of it. Eva can do a full spectrum analysis and make more. Are there any long-term side effects?”

  Kamryn shrugged. “I don’t know. I never stuck around long enough to find out.”

  Axel clenched and unclenched his fists in rapid succession. “All right. Let’s go interrogate Parker.”

  “What about the girls?” Kamryn asked.

  “They’re drugged,” Mark said. “With what, or how long it lasts, we don’t know. Besides, if you came out of a drug-induced coma naked, with strangers staring at you, how would you feel? If we tried to take them out of here on the trolley in their condition, we wouldn’t make it off the tarmac.”

  Kamryn headed back to the room.

  “What are you going to do?” Mark asked.

  “I’m going to take off her restraints.”

  “Wait. We got images of everything else, but not of what we found in there. It must be documented, then sent to Dimitrios as proof of every crime these people have committed.” Mark touched her shoulder. “If you don’t want to do it, I will.”

  Kamryn moved aside.

  Mark turned up the lighting in the room, tapped the screen on his tablet several times, then dimmed the lights again. He used the knife from his boot to cut the girl’s restraints, then carried her over and laid her next to the girl in the corner. Kamryn returned with a padded blanket as a covering for them.

  Mark led the way back to Parker. “This situation has morphed into something way more than we can handle. I’m forwarding all our images to Ohashi. She’ll send them to Dimitrios, and he can decide which agencies should be notified.” He paused in front of the door to Parker’s location and turned to Kamryn. “I think he’d be more receptive to a female voice. Since you did such an excellent job with Millson, you’re in charge here. Right, Axel?”

  Axel frowned, but nodded.

  “Good.” Mark grabbed the door handle, paused again. “You know all the right questions, Kamryn, except why they bought the weapons, if there are any other major players or more ships, or if they have any government officials on their payroll. That’s how these things usually work, isn’t it?”

  Kamryn arched a questioning eyebrow. “You sure you were never a cop?”

  “Reasonably sure.”

  “If this is going to Dimitrios, there’s a protocol to follow,” she added. “It must be recorded. The best angle is from the side—in case the drug makes him look dazed—it won’t be evident, plus it’ll be clear he’s not being tortured. Also, he shouldn’t be able to see anyone but me. No talking in the background, only his voice and mine.”

  They entered the room to find Parker where Axel had left him. Kamryn removed the tape from his face, then cut between his arms and legs enough for him to sit in a chair. She popped an AZ2 under his nose, and jabbed him in the neck with a dose of Quazar. Axel and Mark took positions on either side, recording them on their tablets. Again, Kamryn began her relentless interrogation.

  “What is your name?”

  He seemed disoriented. “Vic…Victor Parker.”

  “Did you have any other names?”

  His eyelids spasmed. “Nick…Nickolaus König.”

  “Who killed the woman soldier?”

  Victor turned away, blinking, trying to focus. “Val.”

  “Who killed the Asian soldier?”

  He squirmed against his bindings. “Val.”

  “Who shot the other male soldier?”

  No response.

  Kamryn got in his face. “Victor!” she yelled. “Who shot the other male soldier?”

  He cringed. “Val made me do it…I had to.”

  “How many cyborgs are there?”

  Drool oozed out of his mouth, rolling off his lower lip. “Twenty…three.”

  “Where are they?”

  With Kamryn’s coaxing, he revealed there were six cyborgs on the Station, about five in each city, and no cyborg production site on Mars.

  “How many clones are there?”

  “A hundred and fifty some.”

  “Where are they?”

  Victor coughed, spraying saliva like raindrops. “Val traded thirty-five.”

  “To whom?”

  Now he slobbered in a steady stream. “Argus.”

  “For what?”

  “Weapons.”

  “What value was put on those weapons?”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  “Is there a clone production site on Mars?”

  As Victor’s drug-induced cooperation waned, so did Kamryn’s patience. She tried a different approach. In a koochie-koo baby voice, she asked, “Vic, honey, are you producing clones on Mars?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What are the weapons for?”

  “Take control of Mars. Start with Dome 3.”

  “Where is Val?”

  He whimpered, “I dunno.”

  “Are any law enforcement or government officials involved in your businesses? If so, who are they?”

  “Yeah…Governor Bryant.”

  Holy shit. Mark immediately held up his hand to halt the interrogation. He stepped out to comm Ohashi. “Victor Parker told us Dr. Clay Bryant’s father is on the Parker’s payroll. Under no circumstances are you to let Eva attend that meeting with him this afternoon. Don’t contact him to say you’re not coming, just don’t go. This is much bigger than we thought. The Parker’s have traded clones for weapons and are guilty of crimes against women too numerous to mention. Valerie Parker killed Sorayne and Wong. Right now, she’s missing. Don’t take any chances. Shoot to kill.”

  Returning to the room, he gave a thumbs up to Kamryn.

  She continued. “Why did the two men leave the hangar a few minutes ago?”

  Victor’s convoluted explanation boiled down to the pilots pulling up stats on the console, which showed the ship’s certified gross weight. The craft was overloaded with cargo, therefore, too heavy to launch, a mistake made solely by Victor.

  “Do you have another ship?”

  “Yeah, Gemini 82-M.”

  “In the Chocolate Factory, who was the cyborg sent to kill?”

  “Mark…Warren.”

  ***

  Axel reapplied tape to Parker’s face and trussed him up again. He broke Victor’s wrist—it could’ve been an accident—nope, it wasn’t. Anyway, he felt a tiny bit better, looking at Parker’s hand dangling at an odd angle underneath the tape. Axel struggled to control his mounting hatred for these people. Now, as he left the room, he knew all too well how Mark felt about Beth Coulter. Her lethal plans to steal classified military research while using cyborgs and clones to terraform Europa had failed. The Parker’s plans were to dominate Mars, a much closer threat to Axel’s homeworld.

  He would not allow that to
happen while he was alive. With his last breath, he would see to it that they all went to hell, screaming the name of Maeve Sorayne.

  Axel and Mark sent their recordings to Ohashi with instructions to encrypt everything, then forwarded it to Dimitrios right away. They settled in awaiting a reply from Terra. When voices began echoing outside in the hangar, all three of them fled back to the room with Parker, planning to use him as a hostage if necessary.

  The sounds of two distinct male voices grew louder. Axel whispered to Kamryn, “Make sure Parker stays unconscious while I go see who’s out there.” Before leaving, he swiped his hand across the floor, then rubbed the oily substance down his cheek. Still wearing the borrowed, grease-stained coveralls, he wandered toward the sounds coming from the entry hatch, running headlong into the lead man of three good-sized, rough-looking individuals. “Hey there.”

  “Who are you?” the lead asked.

  “Tom, from Maintenance,” Axel said.

  “Where’s Victor?”

  “Uh…looking for pilots. He thinks they got lost.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Working on the Lav’s plumbing problems.”

  The lead shoved Axel back against the hull as they walked past him, sliding open a door on the right to look inside. The second man started to grab for the door to Parker’s room on the left.

  Axel wrinkled his nose, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”

  “This isn’t a Lav.”

  “No, but it’s backed up in there.” Axel adjusted his balance, ready to throw another knifehand blow to the third man’s neck. At the same time, he would deliver a swift kick to the first man’s floating ribs, where they were the weakest, perhaps even puncturing his lung. This left the second man to be taken down by Kamryn or Mark. He smiled. “Watch where you step.”

  The third man began grumbling in a low voice. “He promised us some fun when we got here. How long we gonna’ have to wait?”

  “Maybe the girls are already here,” said the second man. “Let’s look around downstairs, where they were last time.”

  That’s all Axel needed to hear. “Well, shit on a blue moon,” Axel drawled. “I think I hear Mr. Parker.”