The Star Collector

by Matthew William

  “Yes,” David answered.

  “I would like to speak with you in private.”

  David winked at Applebottom as he went into the next room for his private conversation with the Chairman. They were most likely discussing an exit strategy for Applebottom, as in when to kill him and cut their losses if the situation spun any further out of control. And the Chairman obviously wanted him to know they were having this conversation, just not the specifics of it.

  If he wanted to live, results were needed.

  And the surefire way to achieve results? Always take the easiest step first. In this case, those two police officers. Applebottom stared at the video feed. They hid behind a statue at the entryway of the throne room.

  So it hadn’t been those two Martians coming to crash the party. He had jumped to the wrong conclusion when he shot Howly Irons.

  Evidently the weak spot in the whole plan was his own distrust of the Martians. And somehow those two officers had cracked it. Who were they? Little matter. They’d be dead soon.

  5

  Joe raised a shaking hand to activate his two way radio and made contact with the outpost once more.

  “Outpost headquarters,” Tyrone the operator answered.

  “Sheriff Corbit reporting,” he said, his voice trembling through a dry mouth.

  “What’s your report sheriff?”

  “It’s another bad one… thought I might warn you in advance.”

  “As long as it’s not as bad as the last one.”

  “Well, there’s a shot kid,” Joe began, rubbing his forehead. “So I think this one is worse by default. There’s a potential raiding at the Talashaa ruins with at least a dozen dead, a police cruiser that’s still undrivable, and a hostage situation on a bus that’s headed… well, we don’t know where it’s headed.”

  “Geez, what happened?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “And did you sneak in the raiding of the ruins into the middle of all that?”

  “Potential raiding, I think is what I said,” Joe replied.

  “Alright,” the operator groaned. “I’ll have to look at the guidelines for that. How’s the kid?”

  “How’s the kid?” Joe asked Tammy

  “He’s…” Tammy probed with her finger at the strangely bloodless wound in the victim’s chest. The kid sat up erect, looked at her and smiled. “I think he’s an android.”

  “We think the kid’s an android,” Joe reported, sighing with relief.

  “Is the owner around?” the operator asked.

  “No, she’s the hostage on the bus.”

  The kid got up, went to the booth and started back up on his homework.

  “Why does she have a child android?” Tammy asked.

  “People are weird,” Joe answered.

  Tammy went, took the paper the kid had been working on and brought it over to Joe. It was some sort of escape coordinates for the sector – algorithms of subspace frequencies on the highways. It was headed through Martian territory towards Chinese space.

  “The plot thickens,” Joe said.

  “Do you have any way of pursuing the bus?” the operator asked.

  “No, not really,” Joe answered.

  “My ship’s okay,” the line cook spoke up.

  “His ship’s okay,” Joe said.

  “Whose… ship?” the operator asked, bewildered.

  “Oh, uh... the cook,” Joe said.

  “The coo… Where the hell are you?”

  “We’re at the Cosmo Diner.”

  “Send me the coordinates, we’ll send backup again.”

  “It still hasn’t arrived from last time,” Joe said, but the operator had already hung up. With a sigh, he sent the coordinates once more.

  They traveled towards the Gallipoli bus terminal in the cook’s surprisingly nice ship. It was a military grade jeep with all the bells and whistles.

  “Am I right in thinking these are Telsa thrusters?” Joe asked.

  “Nope.” The line cook grinned and shook his head, the stogie still clamped between his lips. “Custom job.”

  “Custom job?” Joe exclaimed. “That must’ve put you back a pretty penny. Would you ever consider selling this thing?”

  “Not if my life depended on it,” the cook said.

  “Not even if the price was right?”

  “Excuse me,” Tammy interrupted. “But can we go a little faster?”

  Joe glanced back at her. She was cramped in the tiny rear seat.

  “If that Martian gets on an interstellar rig there’ll be no tracking him.”

  “Uh huh,” said Joe, he turned back to the line cook. “Would 30,000 do it for you?”

  “Joe, come on, seriously,” said Tammy.

  “30,000 is very fair value,” Joe said.

  “I’m talking about the hostage situation,” Tammy replied.

  Joe held up his starsailor’s compass. “Look, I’ve got the bus schedule right here. There’s no departures for an hour. I’ve messaged terminal security and they’ll be there waiting for him. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “And what about once we get him?” Tammy asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you intend on cross examining him?”

  “That’s a lot of work, Tammy.”

  “Don’t you think it’s necessary?”

  “And why might one think that?” Joe asked.

  “Because he said he was forced to do this job. As did those other Martians.”

  “People say a lot of things at the end of a gun, Tammy. Not that you’d know that. Anyway, it was a rehearsed line, intended to keep him out of trouble.”

  “And who do you think told him to say it?”

  “Probably one of those dead bodies back in the throne room.”

  “And who were they? What was that ball thing they put in the box? Why were they after that?”

  “God – I don’t know,” Joe said, tossing his hands in the air.

  “Language please, Joe. What would be your educated guess?”

  “In all likelihood it’s just some random artifact.”

  “And where are they taking it?”

  “Probably to where all artifacts end up eventually – some rich guy’s collection.” Joe shook his head and looked over to the line cook. “This kid, huh?”

  The line cook chuckled in agreement.

  “But the Chinese government being involved? Enoch Applebottom?”

  “Look, if you want, you can ask the Martian all these things once we get him, alright?” Joe said.

  Tammy nodded and looked out the window. “At least one of us has to be a real cop.”

  “Real cop,” Joe scoffed. He crossed his arms and tried to pretend that that comment hadn’t bothered him.

  “30,000 is nowhere near fair value, by the way,” the line cook added.

  Gallipoli terminal appeared on the view screen before them. It was a mid-sized station, with four circular entrance portals for the buses and transports that serviced the sector.

  The line cook piloted his ship in through the nearest portal and parked beside the transport from the diner. There was a scene of chaos awaiting them. The waitress was laying on the floor crying with the black box next to her. A crowd of onlookers surrounded them.

  Joe hopped out of the jeep. “Where’s the Martian?”

  She pointed down the terminal towards the mechanic’s bay, where a row of interstellar transports were lined up. Joe sprinted through the station, dodging immigrant families with massive piles of luggage and a small group of Chinese merchants, eager to leave the sector. Joe tripped and knocked over a large cart of Bezreal fruit, spilling the gray produce all over the tile floor.

  “Come on!” the vendor yelled.

  “Sorry!” Joe said, climbing to his feet and carrying on. “Police business,” he added as an afterthought.

  He unholstered his gun and approached the interstellar bay door, breathing heavily from the fifty meters he’d just sprinted. Q
uickly, he turned the corner. The Martian laid on the floor with a dozen bullet holes in his back. Two terminal security guards stood there high-fiving each other.

  “Umm… nice work boys,” Joe said, a bit bummed out he had missed all the action.

  He holstered his gun and walked back out into the terminal. At the far end of the station, Tammy was helping the waitress into the line cook’s ship. The waitress was carrying the black box. The waitress was carrying the black box!

  “Tammy!” Joe yelled, running with his hands waving in the air. But the girl didn’t hear him. Joe jumped over a bench and knocked over the Bezreal fruit vendor’s cart once again. The gray produce spilled all over the floor.

  “Seriously?” the vendor shouted.

  The military grade jeep lifted off and flew out through the station’s exit portal – the waitress, the line cook and the box within. The ship grew smaller and smaller until it entered the circular Interstellar Freeway entrance and from there it disappeared instantly.

  Tammy stood smiling, waving.

  “Notice anything?” Joe asked as he approached.

  “They were so sweet.”

  “And they took the box.”

  Tammy’s face went white with shock. “She didn’t even say anything. She just... took it.”

  “The artifact Tammy…”

  “You don’t think… you don’t think they were in on the whole thing, do you?”

  “Probably.”

  “And what should we do now?” Tammy asked.

  “Well, being that they made it to the interstellar highway? Nothing. They’re gone and we can’t track them. And if I were you, I’d leave this box detail out of your report.”

  “You have to pay for these,” the Bezreal fruit vendor said, approaching Joe with his produce cart. “You bruised all of them.”

  “They were already like that,” Joe said.

  Eventually the backup arrived and started the process of getting everything cleaned up. A couple of mechanics came in to work the Crown Vik into running condition again.

  While Joe was waiting he leaned against the diner’s stuccoed exterior and idly watched as a TV news crew filmed a brief snippet in the parking lot. With the ruins as a backdrop, the attractive reporter read a long description of the robbery from a tablet.

  “...cutting an entry point in the wall on the solar side of the ruins, entering what has been referred to as the Throne Room...”

  They sure knew a lot of the details. He assumed they would want to have him give a comment on the whole situation, being the sheriff and all.

  “What they were after is anyone’s guess,” the reporter said. “I’m Cameron Payne. Channel 5 news… Okay, that’s a wrap everybody.”

  As the rest of the crew packed up the equipment, the reporter made a beeline for Joe.

  “I’m the sheriff...” he began.

  “I know,” Cameron cut him off. They reached into their folder and took out a business card with the reporter’s name and a fancy Channel 5 logo printed on the glossy paper. “They’re freezing us out of the investigation. If you find out anything more, I have clients who would be very willing to sponsor the airtime.”

  “Sure thing,” Joe said, putting the business card in his wallet. He admired their optimism. There was no way anyone was ever going to tell him anything about this mess.

  As the reporter left, one of the mechanics who was working on his ship approached, wiping off his greasy hands with a diner napkin. “We got her running again.”

  “And the paint job?” Joe asked.

  “That will have to wait.”

  That was code for ‘it’s never getting fixed’.

  The diner’s owner came in to check on things and found the usual waitress and line cook dead in the freezer. They had been stabbed as well. Presumably, the fake waitress and substitute line cook had intended on making the diner a rendezvous point with the Martians and wanted complete control of the situation.

  In the end they got what they wanted.

  Joe and Tammy flew back towards the outpost office in the Crown Vik. A pallet of Bezreal fruit sat down in the cargo hold.

  Joe’s mind always wandered as he drove and now his thoughts drifted towards the artifact. What significance did that little piece have? Its discovery was, without a doubt, something monumental for mankind – it was a shame it was all going to be kept behind closed doors. Joe longed to see just a glimpse of that information. What was that thing? What did the Talashaa use it for? Why were the Chinese and the Martians after it?

  He longed to marry a story to the object.

  But the trail had gone cold and the fake waitress and substitute line cook were probably selling the thing for a fortune somewhere.

  Life had been like that for Joe – coming tortuously close to something great, only to lose it at the last second for no apparent reason. So it goes.

  As he drove, a strange scene caught his eye.

  “What the hell?” he asked aloud.

  Completely motionless in space, was a lone asteroid in the middle of nowhere with a park bench and a street lamp planted on its surface. Joe had driven past the curious mass before and it had piqued his interest. The whole thing had no business being where it was, for it appeared as if it had once been part of a planet, with the faded yellow lines of a paved road still barely visible. But Joe had been unable to dig up any information, or find it on any map. A person sitting on that bench was not something he had ever expected to see. Yet there it was.

  An old Pakistani man in a suit sat there, within an atmospheric bubble, apparently waiting for something.

  Joe pulled into the bubble and lowered his window.

  “You okay, sir?” Joe asked.

  “Just waiting for the bus,” the man answered.

  Joe looked around for a moment. “I hate to break it to you, but no buses come here.”

  “None that you know about.”

  “Come on, let me take you home,” Joe said, preparing to pull in.

  “No, that’s not necessary. You go on and get to where you were going.”

  Joe muttered to Tammy. “I think this guy’s out of it.”

  The girl nodded in agreement.

  “I’m quite alright upstairs, sonny. I assure you,” the old man said. “And you don’t have time for this anyway. You’ve got an appointment to make... don’t you?”

  Joe just kind of laughed. “I’ll come back and check on you later, alright?”

  “Do what you got to do,” the man said with a wave of farewell.

  Joe shook his head and drove off.

  “That guy could die out there,” Tammy said.

  “Well, he diagnosed himself as quite alright upstairs, so...”

  Tammy nodded and examined her fingernails. “Do you really have an appointment to make?”

  Joe shrugged. “What does that matter?”

  “Could be a sign.”

  Joe was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to request your transfer when I make my report.”

  “But...” Tammy whimpered. “Come on, man.”

  “You’re not cut out for life out here,” Joe said. “I’d be doing you a favor, honestly.”

  Tammy, shook her head and looked out the window. Her lower lip quivered the tiniest bit. One sad little tear rolled down her cheek.

  That was a punch in the gut for Joe. It wasn’t his intention to hurt the girl’s feelings – he was only looking out for her best interests. She could be killed out here.

  “Hey, if it’s any consolation,” he said, “you kind of impressed me with your work with the stun stick today.”

  Tammy cracked a smile.

  “Until you forgot the keys in the cruiser,” Joe continued.

  Tammy sighed.

  “And let important evidence in an international incident get away.”

  “Alright,” Tammy said.

  “And didn’t let me get out of paying for all this damn Bezreal fruit.”

  “Oh come on, seriously?”


  “Yeah that was the final straw. I was sort of on the fence before that.”

  “I was the one who paid for it,” Tammy said.

  “And now I have to pay you back,” Joe replied. He shook his head. “I don’t even know what Bezreal fruit is and now I’ve got a whole pallet of it.”

  He pulled up to the Sector 121 office, a three room affair in a space station strip mall, and parked next to Tammy’s ship. The young girl sat quietly in the passenger seat, waiting for something – perhaps a last second change of heart from Joe.

  “So that’s it?” Tammy asked.

  “Yeah. Like the old guy said, I’ve got an appointment to make.”

  Tammy nodded and left the craft.

  Joe made sure her ship started before he lifted the Crown Vik up and out of the parking lot. He wondered if the outpost would even let him transfer the girl. There was no harm in trying.

  On the way to his night job he stopped by the post office to pick up his mail. A red envelope among the junk caught his eye. With a knot in his stomach he opened it. An invoice from Falsterboo Cardiology Associates. Joe’s forehead began to tingle. The bill was for 900 credits and overdue.

  He couldn't even afford a couple bowls of chili, how was he going to pay a 900 credit bill?

  Joe drove towards the freeway, taking a short detour past the asteroid where the old man had been sitting. But the park bench was empty. Perhaps a bus really had come by to pick him up. That or whatever institution he had escaped from had finally found him and taken him home. Either way, it was out of Joe’s hands.

  He got onto the freeway and drove for an hour until pulling off at the junction for the Chinese sector. Joe wasn’t supposed to be going there – it was off limits for all American citizens.

  If he knew he was being followed he would have thought twice.

  6

  “Look. I’ve been working here for a long time,” Joe said. “And I’ve been thinking, it’s time we take it to the next level – become more like partners. I’ve worked hard, I’ve learned a lot and I really know my stuff now. The fact is, you need me. So the only question that remains is... what can you offer me?”

  Joe let out a sigh. Practicing a conversation with your boss was supposed to make you less nervous for the real thing, or at least, that’s what he assumed from seeing it in movies. Whomever came up with the idea had obviously never worked for Gary Shenzhen.