Psychogen (Galactic Syndicate Cycle Book 1)

by N. C. Madigan

  “That’s the stuff they use for fertilizer…” Liza whispered, mostly to herself. “They must have just…” She glanced back at the door to the ship, “Killed everyone.”

  Once in the safety of her room, Liza stretched out on her bed and allowed the rest of her tears to fall, the bundle of books still nestled against her chest. She cried for everyone who was killed on the Moon Colonies, and cried for her parents, and her sister, wherever she was.

  When her chest hurt from sobbing, she calmed, and took a long hot shower. Halfway through, she began to feel survivor’s guilt and got out before she’d really finished. Liza stretched back out on her bed with the books. She picked them up one by one, feeling somehow closer to her sister and smiled at memories of Vely trying to tell them about life on Earth. They’d let her ramble for hours, because she was so passionate about the subject. For any Moon Colonist to be passionate about anything besides survival was a wonder. Tears pricked at her eyes. Liza wiped them away quickly, determined not to cry again.

  A soft knock on her door altered her to a visitor. “Come in,” she called. The door opened and Becce stepped inside.

  “Hey there,” she said, trying to smile. Liza pushed herself up on the bed and nodded in greeting. Becce made sure the door closed behind her and sat down on the bed with Liza. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m alright,” Liza said. Becce touched the skin under Liza’s eyes.

  “You’re all puffy,” she said. Liza shrugged, but she had a small smile on her face.

  “I can cry and still be okay,” Liza replied. Becce smiled, too.

  “You’re right.” Becce leaned over and pulled Liza into a tight hug. Liza allowed the hug, and her mind drifted back to the somewhat awkward moment when she’d accidentally controlled Dom’s mind, and he’d touched her face.

  “I should tell you something,” Liza said once Becce had pulled away.

  “What is it?”

  “I might have… controlled Dom’s mind. It was a few days ago, and it was an accident,” Liza said, stumbling over the words as she tried to say them as fast as possible. Becce raised an eyebrow.

  “You already learned how to do that?” she asked.

  “I didn’t mean to. He took my glove off,” Liza said. “It just happened.”

  “Did you make him do anything?” Becce asked, appearing to be torn between amusement and concern. Liza looked away, wanting to lie, but she told Becce the truth about the two commands she’d given him. It didn’t make Liza feel better when Becce started laughing.

  “How is this funny?” Liza asked.

  “What I’d give to make men fall for me whenever I wanted,” she said through her laughter. Liza scowled.

  “That’s not what I was doing,” she huffed. Becce tried to stop laughing but failed miserably.

  “I know, Liza. I know. Especially since you have nothing to worry about with Dom,” she said. Liza took her turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Becce patted her shoulder.

  “He fell hard for you, girl,” Becce said, and rose from the bed and moved to leave. Liza scrambled off the bed.

  “You can’t just say that and leave!” she cried out, stumbling over the blankets that tangled in her legs. Becce glanced over her shoulder.

  “There’s nothing else to say,” she said, a mischievous grin on her face. “Enjoy.” And she was gone.

  20

  Vely and Cedrick had to decide a course of action. Either they could stay on New Zion to plan, or they could continue their travels with Denny and the food vendors to their next destination, Mars. Cedrick and Vely were in their storage closet, discussing their options.

  “We should just stay with them. We’d have a better chance of getting more information on Mars than this colony,” Cedrick argued.

  “But we’ll be going further away from the Sun Stations,” Vely protested.

  “You can’t just walk onto the Sun Stations. You’d step off the ship and most likely be killed on sight,” countered Cedrick. Vely scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Besides, Mars is a much more popular location, and is bound to give us some leads.” Vely tapped her foot on the ground. Her parents had always told Liza and Vely to never travel to Mars, that it was worse than the Moon Colonies. When she’d expressed this concern to Cedrick and Denny, they’d shook their heads, laughing.

  “Mars is just an endless party,” Denny had said.

  Vely uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way. Cedrick was staring hard at her, waiting for her to agree. Finally, Vely exhaled harshly and flopped her arms to her sides.

  “Fine, we’ll go with your plan,” she said. Cedrick smiled.

  “I knew you’d come around,” he said.

  The departure from New Zion was uneventful, and Vely eventually retired to her shared room. When she arrived, a few of the women were chatting, but they stopped when she came in.

  “There you are!” one of the women said happily. Vely was told to refer to this woman as “Mama.”

  “Hi,” Vely said, waving her hand. Sometimes she didn’t trust these women and their schemes. They’d already found out about Vely’s little crush on Cedrick and had been trying to exploit it for days.

  “We were discussing you just now, dear,” Mama said. “We’ve got to disguise you.” Vely crossed her arms.

  “Disguise me?”

  “Don’t tell us you enjoy staying on the ship all day!” another woman cried out. Vely shook her head.

  “Of course not,” she replied. The women rose from where they’d been sitting.

  “Excellent. Let us help you,” Mama said. “We’ll just change your hair color and give you a little cut. You’ll hardly look like yourself.” Vely bit her lip. It all sounded awful. But the alternative was, as they’d said, to stay on the ship.

  “Fine.”

  Vely couldn’t watch herself in the mirror as the women fluttered around her, mixing something and drenching it in her hair. Eventually, one woman shoved Vely’s head into a bowl of warm water and whatever was put in her hair was scrubbed away. Another woman used a towel to dry some of the water from Vely’s hair. She kept her eyes closed as they snipped at her hair with a pair of scissors. Though they were making noises of appreciation, Vely refused to believe that whatever they were doing was going to look good.

  The women stepped back from her, admiring their work. Vely reached up to touch her hair, her head feeling lighter. The ends now hung just past her shoulders in choppy layers, rather than low on her back.

  “Look in the mirror!” one of the women exclaimed. Vely turned reluctantly to the mirror on the wall, and her mouth dropped.

  Her hair was dark brown, almost black. She stared at her reflection, touching her hair once more. She thought the dark color of her new hair made her look sickly, with the circles under her eyes and white skin.

  “Won’t I stand out?!” Vely cried, turning to look at the women. They grinned and shook their heads.

  “Trust us. You’ll be fine.” Vely didn’t believe them.

  Nothing could have prepared Vely for Mars. The trip from New Zion was short, during which Vely and Cedrick spent their time speculating about what they would do next. Cedrick hadn’t said much about Vely’s new hair style, but his attention to her never wavered.

  She waited anxiously near the door when Denny docked the ship. The food vendors were in the hull waiting, so that left only Cedrick at her side, trying to keep her from getting too excited.

  “Have you been here?” Vely asked after he told her to relax for the thousandth time.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you so calm?”

  “Being excited only attracts unwanted attention, Vely,” he answered. “Plus, your Tranquility is leaking out.” Vely pouted her lips and glanced around. Indeed, there was a fine blue mist in the air. She took a few deep breaths until Cedrick nodded. “That’s better.”

  She was excited, and not just nervou
s, but happy. She’d only ever heard horror stories about Mars, and now she’d get to experience the real thing for herself. She felt like a new woman, an explorer, someone she never thought she’d ever be. And it felt good.

  She wondered if Liza was changing, too.

  The shudder of the ship announced their successful docking on Mars. Vely swayed back and forth on her feet, trying to stay calm while they waited for Denny to give the all-clear. Finally, he came around a corner, his black jacket slung over his shoulder.

  “Ready?” he asked with a grin. Vely didn’t give an answer but punched in the code to open the door. It opened and the gangway from the ship extended out to meet the platform. It had barely connected when Vely was stepping off into the crowd of people in the spaceport.

  “Hey, wait!” Cedrick cried, running after her, with Denny right behind.

  Vely stopped as soon as she jogged through the clear doors that separated the spaceport from the first dome of Mars. Buildings rose high around her, surrounded by short, squat buildings made of rusty brown bricks. And it was just as Cedrick said: one giant party.

  Music blared from all directions - music like she’d never heard before. The smell of food, all kinds of food, filled her nose. Everywhere she looked, there was something new to see, some other strange costume worn by a Martian, some other building with streamers and drapes hanging from windows and balconies. It was beautiful and chaotic.

  “I’ll meet up with you later,” Denny said, taking a few steps away. “You have your communicator?” he asked, looking at Cedrick, who held up the small black device and nodded. Denny turned and walked towards a street that was lit up by green lights. Vely watched him for a moment.

  “Where is he going?” she asked. Cedrick shifted uncomfortably.

  “It’s the green-light district. It’s for… men.” Vely opened her mouth to ask more, but his face had turned red in embarrassment. He grasped her arm. “Come on. Denny told me where to go, a bar, where we might be able to hear information about The Gypsy Star.” He tugged her along through the crowds for a moment. Vely jogged to keep up with his much longer strides, but her head swiveled in every direction, trying to take in as much as she could. There were couples everywhere, kissing and fondling enough to make Vely uncomfortable. Food vendors lined the streets, bands playing music, men and women in colorful costumes danced to the music, and everything was exciting. The colors burned into her mind, replacing the gray that was the Moon Colonies.

  While marveling, she bumped into Cedrick, who had stopped walking because of a large crowd in front of them. “Careful,” he mumbled down to her. Vely was about to make some snarky comment back to him, but she felt a light pressure at her side.

  She whirled around quickly and reached out, her hand gripping around someone else’s wrist. Behind her was a young boy, and in his hand, he held one of her credit chips. Vely yanked it back from him and growled at him, “Never try to pick someone from the Moon Colonies.” The boy stared at her, eyes wide and frightened, until he yanked his own arm away from her and took off through the crowd. Never one to let a lesson go unnoticed, Vely removed all her belongings from the outer pockets of her coat and slipped them into the interior pockets. “Amateurs,” she grumbled, and the crowd began to move.

  The bar that Cedrick led Vely to was called The Stern. It was painted to look like ancient wood, but of course, little was made of wood anymore, and instead was made of the same rusty brown bricks as everything else on the planet. Cedrick opened the door and allowed Vely in first, following close behind. The bar was dark inside, and there were many people sitting at the tables in a cacophony of noise and drinking. Cedrick took Vely’s arm and led her towards an empty table in the corner.

  “Listen for anything that might be relevant,” he said, before he walked to the bar. Vely nodded and leaned back in her chair, attempting to look casual. She felt silly pretending to be casual.

  Cedrick returned a moment later with two cups, and he gave one to her. Vely sniffed the liquid inside. It smelled disgusting. “This is supposed to be the best on Mars,” Cedrick said with a grin. Vely snorted but took a sip. The only taste she could discern was ‘dirty,’ and the liquid burned all the way down her throat and into her belly. Vely squirmed a bit, until the drink settled down. Cedrick took a long drink from his own cup and leaned back in his chair. His eyes roamed the bar, so Vely followed suit, listening for anything.

  “Vely.”

  Vely’s eyes snapped open. She’d been asleep, leaning her face down on her folded arms on the table. The cup next to her was empty, and Cedrick was leaning forward on the table, shaking her arm.

  “What?” she asked, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes with her gloved hands.

  “Listen,” he said, and gestured vaguely to a table nearby.

  “There’s chatter on the Syndicate lines,” a gruff looking man was saying. “Something that stemmed from the revolts on the Moon.”

  Vely’s eyes widened, and she glanced at Cedrick. He looked excited.

  “They were called to the Cove,” someone else said. “My sister is the cook on The Icarus, and she sent me a message about it just a few days ago.”

  “I thought those meetings were supposed to be secret.”

  “Can’t be secret when every bloody person alive knows where their hideout is.”

  Laughter. Vely could barely follow the conversation.

  “I’m calling it now. It’ll be mayhem and revolt.”

  “Maybe they’ll side with the SSA.”

  “You kidding? Never.”

  “My old cap’n would never side with the SSA. Ever.”

  The conversation continued, falling into jibes at each other and more speculation. Cedrick was rising from the table already.

  “We’ve got what we need,” he said. Vely opened her mouth to speak, but Cedrick shook his head and held out a hand. Vely took it, and as quickly as they could, they slipped from the bar.

  “What was that all about?” Vely asked, hurrying behind Cedrick as they pressed their way through the writhing, dancing crowds. Cedrick craned his neck up, looked around, and pulled Vely through a group of people into a deserted alley. He pressed her against the wall of a building and stood in front of her, shielding her from the view of anyone who might be passing by. His face was close to hers, as if he would kiss her at any moment.

  Vely mentally shook herself. This was no time to be thinking about him that way.

  “Some who follow the lifestyle of a pirate are part of the Galactic Syndicate. It’s a loose group that’s governed by an elected Captain from a ship. Sometimes, they band together for some reason, like-”

  “Like the high-jacking of the ships coming back from Galaxy 43T, carrying the largest precious gems ever found,” Vely finished for him, remembering an article she’d read on the Network when she’d realized that Liza was in the company of pirates. Cedrick nodded, his eyebrows lifting slightly in surprise.

  “If those men in there are right, then perhaps what we started on the Moon is spreading, and they might be getting involved,” Cedrick said. His eyes were dancing with excitement.

  “But why would anyone else want to revolt? Aren’t other places happy?” Vely asked. Cedrick’s eyes darkened slightly, as if he were remembering an unpleasant memory.

  “I don’t think the human race has ever been happy,” Cedrick said. “Even more so in space. We weren’t made for space living.” Vely considered this, but the idea that the pirates would want to help anyone else was contradictory to what she’d been reading on the Sol Network. Though they did like to stir up trouble.

  “So… what? We go to the Cove? And see if The Gypsy Star is there and rescue Liza?” Vely asked.

  “Not that easy,” he replied. “If Denny tried to approach the Cove, we’d be blown into a million tiny pieces.” Vely’s heart sank a little.

  “Then we have to come up with something else!”

  Cedrick chuckled, and pressed a hand to the side of her face. “We will.”
And with that, Cedrick leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, making her breath catch in her lungs and her knees weaken. Vely’s insides burned with fire, filling every crack of her psyche with flames. When Credrick pulled away, Vely’s face burned. But before anything else could be said, Cedrick went rigid, and his eyes glazed over. Vely grabbed his arms to keep him from stumbling backwards.

  “Cedrick! What’s wrong?” Vely asked, desperation filling her voice. Cedrick stumbled back a few steps, but Vely grabbed his shoulders to steady him.

  “They’re planning something terrible,” he said, his voice rigid and unemotional. “To control and destroy.” Vely’s eyes went wide.

  “Who?” she asked. “The pirates?” But as quickly as it came, the vision passed. Cedrick blinked several times, and his eyes returned to normal. His chest rose and fell rapidly. “What did you see?” she asked, still holding him by the shoulders.

  “So many explosions,” he said, pressing his hands to his temples. “So much pain.”

  “Did you see it from me?” she asked. “From… the kiss?” Cedrick shrugged his shoulders.

  “Possible.” He stepped out of her grasp and leaned against the wall of the building. “I feel like I was in one of those explosions.” Vely frowned. “We shouldn’t linger here,” he said after another silent moment. “We need to find your sister.”

  “Yes,” she said. Vely reached for his hand, laced her fingers through his, and together, they left the alley to search for Denny.

  21

  The Gypsy Star wasted no time in leaving the Moon and heading towards what the Captain called ‘the Cove.’ Liza spent most of her time in the cockpit with Becce and Dom. Soon after leaving the Moon, the twins presented Liza with a refurbished tablet, one they’d found lying around the ship and repaired. It was a little banged up, but the screen was intact. It didn’t take long for Liza to figure the device out, and before long, she was skimming the Sol Network, astounded at how much information was available. As far as Liza knew, there was no access to the Network on the Moon. And now that no one was alive on the Moon, there certainly was no access to the Network.