Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  McCall switched to the other two files she’d pulled up, those of the law enforcers who’d taken over her ship. Scipio had verified they weren’t criminals masquerading as government employees, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything shifty about them.

  Axton had been an athlete and a good student in school, even a Xerikesh boy at his local Divine Suns Trinity Church, before joining the military. Strange that he’d turned into an unbalanced ass, at least from what she’d witnessed. Axton had been selected early on for the cyborg surgeries and had served in the fleet’s elite Cyborg Corps for almost ten years before being, according to his record, discharged without bias.

  McCall hadn’t seen that before and wasn’t sure how to interpret it. It wasn’t a dishonorable discharge, but it also wasn’t an honorable one. He’d been working as sheriff out among the border worlds for the last two years and didn’t have any demerits on his record that she’d been able to dig up. Law-enforcer records weren’t available to the public, but she knew a few back doors into their databases, so she should have been able to find out if he’d been reported by civilians or colleagues. But who would report him out on the border planets? Few people out there wanted anything to do with the empire, so they handled matters with their own hands instead of complaining to the law.

  McCall typed up a quick note to an AWOL cyborg she had met a few months earlier. Sebastian Sears. She’d helped him avoid notice of the authorities and showed him how to survive off the grid, so he probably wouldn’t mind assisting her if it wouldn’t endanger him. All she wanted to know was if someone who’d been inside the Cyborg Corps knew anything about Axton.

  Deshmukh was something of a mystery too. Oh, she’d found his name easily enough—Arjun “Dash” Deshmukh—and record of his years as a bounty hunter. But for some reason, he had enrolled in the law-enforcer academy for a career change less than a year ago. He was a mere assistant deputy, not even a deputy, though he also held the designation of pilot. The career change seemed an odd choice for someone who was in his late thirties, or so his record said. There was nothing about him, not where he’d grown up or where he’d gone to school, until almost twenty years ago when he’d enrolled in the civilian flight academy on Arkadius. He’d graduated and flown freight for a couple of years before becoming a bounty hunter.

  “Who goes from being a bounty hunter to a law enforcer? From having no rules whatsoever and working independently to having to deal with a chain of command as strict as that of the imperial space fleet?”

  A squeak answered her, and she jumped.

  Junkyard was on his feet, his forelegs and head lowered in an invitation to play. A stuffed bramisar dangled from his lips.

  McCall sighed, swiped her fingers through the displays to close them, and scooted off the bed to play tug-o-war with him. “Sorry, buddy. I know how you feel. I need exercise too.”

  Her back and neck ached from doing research from her bed instead of the ergonomic chair in her office, and she wanted to hop on her treadmill for a run. She usually did that first thing in the morning, but she’d been staying in her cabin since her unasked-for visitors had arrived. Aside from quick outings to escort Junkyard to the waste area where he took care of biological needs, she hadn’t felt like going to her office or the exercise room, not when she might run into the two intruders in the corridor.

  She craved her usual routine and resented the interruption to it. Early-morning exercise with Junkyard, followed by breakfast, followed by a day of work, followed by an evening meal with Scipio. He did not dine, but he kept her company, and they discussed business. Then she did her stretches and read, painted, or played holo games. That was how her days went. That was how she liked them to go. When there were changes, she grew frustrated, and being cooped up in her cabin made her especially antsy. Clearly, Junkyard was antsy too. He wasn’t a young pup with crazy amounts of energy, but he was an adult dog in the prime of his life. He had needs.

  “We both do,” McCall muttered, tugging back when Junkyard sank his weight into his back haunches.

  He was big enough to pull her off her feet if he wanted, but he usually didn’t. He could have fun by exerting enough effort to keep the game going but not so much that either of them ended up losers.

  “If I could trust you not to bite that cyborg in the balls, I’d let you out to run around the ship.” She wouldn’t actually feel bad if Junkyard bit Axton in the balls, but she was positive the sheriff had been ready to shoot to kill in the cargo hold the first day. Her heart had been in her throat, and it had taken everything she had not to freak out and try to shoot him first. Not that a stun gun would have done anything against someone in full combat armor.

  Junkyard released the toy, trotted to the hatch, and looked expectantly over his shoulder.

  Though McCall couldn’t blame the dog for his needs, she grimaced, still not wanting to run into her visitors. She felt a little guilty that she’d left them to fend for themselves in regard to where things were and what food they could eat, but her brief interactions with Axton had left her convinced he was best avoided. While Dash wasn’t as overbearing, and she had empathized with him when his boss had been chewing him out in the corridor, his probing gaze was disconcerting, and she couldn’t help but feel he was trying to discover all her secrets.

  Her stomach growled, reminding her again of her interrupted routine.

  “All right,” she said. “We venture out.”

  Junkyard wagged his tail so that it thwacked resoundingly against the closest bulkhead.

  McCall opened the hatch, hoping to find the corridor empty, only to see two people standing right outside with their backs to her. They turned to look at her, and she had a view across the way into the open hatchway of Scipio’s room.

  Her stomach plummeted into her shoes. That hatch had been locked. She had done it herself.

  “What’s going on?” McCall meant her voice to sound authoritative and indignant, but the words came out squeaky and terrified.

  Junkyard snarled, and she jumped. Axton’s eyebrows crashed together as he scowled at the dog. He’d removed his combat armor and wore only his uniform with a stun gun, but that didn’t make him any less intimidating. A cyborg would have the strength to break a dog’s spine with his bare hands.

  Worried anew for Junkyard, McCall used her hip to block him from getting out, then closed the hatch with a silent apology and promise that she would take him out later. If these two didn’t throw her in her own brig. What were they doing? Had they found Scipio?

  “An investigation,” Axton said flatly.

  She looked past Dash to the control pad next to the door. A palm print should have been required to unlock it, but someone had taken off the panel and fiddled with the circuitry inside.

  “You broke the lock?” she demanded. “Why? You could have asked me to open it. Who’s going to repair that?”

  Dash had the decency to look abashed. Axton only maintained his scowl and thrust a finger through the hatchway to the built-in bunk, desk, and hand-carved wooden armoire that Scipio had found at some dockside sale. McCall didn’t see him in the cabin. Where had he deactivated himself? In his closet?

  “You said this was a storage area,” Axton said, “but this is someone’s cabin.”

  “Yes, with someone’s belongings stored in it,” McCall said. A true statement.

  Dash frowned slightly, peering at her face in that disconcerting way again.

  Axton stalked into the cabin and began rummaging around. Roughly.

  McCall clenched her fists. If the bastard broke any of those ceramic eggs that Scipio collected, she would… she didn’t know what. She had occasionally fantasized about hiring hitmen to nail the truly odious people she encountered—especially since she’d gotten to the point where she could actually afford their services—but she would never truly do something she considered amoral. Her mother had raised her to be a good law-abiding person, and if there was such a thing as an afterlife, she would frown with vehement
disapproval if McCall or her sister ever did anything criminal. Admittedly, taking Scipio from his previous owners hadn’t been legal, but McCall wasn’t convinced it had been wrong.

  “Are you harboring a criminal?” Dash asked her quietly.

  “Am I harboring a criminal?” McCall kept herself from pouring incredulity into her voice and overacting—she’d been told she was horrible at acting. She realized she was fiddling with her bracelet and jerked her hands down to her sides. “Of course not. You scanned my ship, didn’t you? I’m the only one here. Me and Junkyard.”

  Dash’s eyes narrowed. Damn, she was even worse at telling half-truths than she remembered. Either that, or he was oddly perceptive for a bounty hunter.

  Axton waved a hand over the sensor for the closet, and McCall winced, certain he’d find—

  “Awk,” Axton blurted, jumping back and reaching for his holster.

  McCall hadn’t grabbed her stun gun out of her cabin, so she couldn’t shoot him in the back if he fired. Too bad. He wasn’t in his combat armor now. He ought to be vulnerable.

  Dash’s eyes narrowed farther.

  “What is that?” Axton lowered his hand without drawing his weapon. “An android?”

  McCall shrugged. “Yes. It’s his room.”

  “Why is he in the closet?” Axton threw Dash a look that even McCall didn’t have trouble reading. He thought the situation was weird and that she was too.

  Better to be thought weird than a thief.

  “I deactivated him,” McCall said, able to see from the corridor that Scipio was standing utterly still and tilted back slightly, his head and shoulders against the back wall of the closet. His eyes were closed. “He’s been malfunctioning, and I need to take him to see a tech when I get a chance.”

  It sounded reasonable to her, and Scipio obliged by keeping his eyes shut. She knew his state of inactivity was more akin to sleep than some true deactivation from which he couldn’t rouse himself, but maybe these two wouldn’t know the difference.

  “Why did you have him locked in here?” Dash asked.

  “So nobody would break any of his stuff.” She waved at the glass display case that held Scipio’s egg collection and then toward an overflowing hat rack in the corner of the cabin. The closet was so full of his suits that she was amazed Axton had even spotted him in there among them. “Your boss looks like an ox,” she added.

  Dash snorted.

  Axton glowered back at both of them. “You got your netdisc, Dash?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come scan this android’s serial number.”

  McCall grew utterly still. They suspected. It hadn’t even been two full days, and they already suspected she was up to something. What would they do when they found out? Take Scipio back to that awful factory where he’d been that woman’s sex slave and ordered to fetch this and that for her pleasure? Like he was some mindless automaton and not a sentient being with an AI as sophisticated as any out there?

  “Yes, sir.” Dash frowned at McCall and walked into the cabin.

  She lamented having left her stun gun by her bed. Could she run over and get it in time? Even if she could, what would she do? Stun them both, drag them into one of the life pods and eject it into space?

  If she took an action like that, she would be considered a criminal, and the law enforcers would come after her. They would take her ship away permanently, if they didn’t kill her outright. To avoid that fate, she would have to spend the rest of her days in hiding, and she would lose all her freedom, everything she’d worked toward her whole life.

  But could she stand back and do nothing as they took her friend away?

  “Got it?” Axton asked.

  Dash stepped back from the closet, a netdisc in hand. “Yes, sir. Do you want me to send it back to Headquarters to see if it matches anything in their files?”

  “Give it to me. I’ll do it.” Axton took the netdisc from Dash’s hands.

  Dash squinted at him but did not object.

  “Is there a problem?” Scipio asked, his eyes opening.

  Both men jumped.

  McCall rubbed her face. She didn’t know if things would get better or worse if Scipio spoke. Had his awareness been switched on earlier so he knew what was going on? Or would he inadvertently countermand what she’d said?

  “Scipio,” McCall said, not worrying about using that name, since he’d given it to himself after they started working together, and it wasn’t in a record anywhere. His serial number, however, was a different matter. “I commanded you to power down. You haven’t been yourself, remember? I was going to have you looked at on Sherran Moon.”

  “Have we not yet reached Sherran Moon?” Scipio looked from Dash to Axton as he stepped slowly out of the closet. “Is there a problem, Captain?” He looked across the cabin at her.

  McCall knew he would attack if she ordered it, and she knew he had strength to equal that of a cyborg, but he was a personal assistant model, not a combat specialist, despite his choice to name himself after an Ancient Earth general. She couldn’t assume he would best Axton in a fight. And then there was Dash to deal with. She was even less a combat specialist than Scipio, and since she’d walked out without her stun gun…

  Axton bunched his shoulders and curled his fingers into fists, scowling at McCall when she didn’t answer.

  “No problem,” McCall told Scipio. “Law enforcers are temporarily borrowing our ship.”

  Scipio knew all this, of course, and she wasn’t sure what they might gain from a ruse, but playing stupid seemed a better bet than laying all her cards on the table.

  “Do they require the use of my cabin?” Scipio asked.

  “No, I’m not sure why they’re in here. They broke the lock instead of asking me to open the door.”

  “I believe human social conventions would classify that as rude.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Shut up.” Axton made a chopping motion with his hand. “You, skip tracer. Want to tell me now if this android is stolen property? Before I send my report back to HQ and find out for myself?”

  “Why would you think my android is stolen?” McCall said. “Surely, you looked me up. I make good money. I own this ship. I have no need to pilfer computer equipment.”

  “Computer equipment?” Scipio asked. “I am far superior to simple computer equipment, Captain.”

  “Because my pilot thinks you’re up to something duplicitous,” Axton said, ignoring Scipio’s interjection.

  McCall grimaced at Dash. She didn’t know why he was after her, but she realized she’d been right earlier, that he had been trying to wheedle information out of her.

  He looked away from her.

  “Is the android stolen?” Axton repeated.

  McCall took a breath and forced herself to meet the big man’s eyes. “No.”

  She counted to five before looking away, though she found it extremely unpleasant to hold that intimacy with him, especially when he was glowering the whole time.

  “Where did you buy it?” Axton asked, not appearing impressed by her eye contact.

  “I did not buy him. He applied for a job with me, and I hired him.”

  Axton’s brow furrowed.

  “He proved very adept at administration tasks, and he’s far better at interfacing with clients than I am,” McCall added, “so I eventually made him my business partner.”

  Dash looked back at her, but she couldn’t easily read his expression. He wasn’t scowling like Axton. He seemed puzzled.

  Was that better than suspicious? McCall wished she knew.

  “Someone had to buy him,” Axton said. “Androids are made for people to buy. They’re things. They aren’t created—at great expense, I understand—and then told to go out into the world and find work for themselves.”

  McCall kept herself from pointing out that cyborgs were also made but that they still had rights. She shrugged and said, “I didn’t ask him for his life’s story. He offered to do my paperwork and a
nswer the comms. What more could a small business owner ask for?”

  Axton turned his scowl on Scipio. “Who is your owner? Your rightful owner?”

  McCall tensed. She had never asked Scipio to lie on her behalf—or his—and she didn’t know if his programming would allow it.

  “I was originally purchased for use in a computer systems factory owned by a wealthy businesswoman with a government contract, but I was deemed surplus and no longer needed for the work there.”

  McCall kept from snorting. She had been the one to deem him surplus, not his previous owner. That factory created communications security systems for the space fleet, and Scipio knew the hardware and software forward and back. Since those systems were now in use by the military, the empire wouldn’t want him running loose if they knew he’d escaped rather than being destroyed, as McCall believed the woman had reported.

  Axton tapped notes into Dash’s netdisc. “We’ll check on this.”

  He stalked for the exit and would have mowed McCall over if she hadn’t jumped to the side.

  Dash walked out more slowly, pausing in the hatchway as if he wanted to say something to her. She willed him to go away. She didn’t want anything to do with either of them.

  “Dash,” Axton barked from down the corridor.

  Dash sighed and followed his boss without a word.

  McCall stepped into the cabin and closed the hatch behind her.

  “They scanned my serial number,” Scipio said quietly.

  “I know.”

  “I did not know if I should stop them or not.”

  “I’m not sure you could. The big one is a cyborg. The other man is… I don’t know what he is.”

  “His uniform identifies him as a pilot and a law-enforcement assistant deputy.”

  “Right,” McCall said. “All right, let’s not panic yet.”

  “I am not capable of panicking.”