Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I am.”

  “Ah, yes. Understood.”

  “We’re hours out from real-time communication with the core worlds, and the Law Enforcement Headquarters are on Perun, which is on the far side of its orbit around Novus Solis from us right now, so he won’t likely get a report back until tomorrow or the day after. Unfortunately, we have three more days of travel with them before we get to Frost Moon 3.”

  “His personal communications device would need to boost through our dish to reach the core worlds from here,” Scipio said. “It may be possible to jam his transmission before he sends it.”

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  “Of course.” Scipio tilted his head toward the hatch. “I would need to be in NavCom and have access to all the communications equipment.”

  McCall stepped aside. “Go ahead. He’ll know he’s being jammed, right?”

  “He will know there is a problem getting the signal out. It is possible he will believe it an error rather than sabotage.”

  Somehow, McCall doubted Axton was the type to believe there was an innocent reason for something when it would be possible to interpret it as a malicious reason. “Do your best to make it seem like an error then. In the meantime, I’ll dig more into his record. There’s something fishy about a former fleet cyborg running around as a sheriff in the hind end of space.”

  “I trust you will find the reason.” Scipio disappeared, heading to NavCom.

  McCall believed she would, too, but what she didn’t believe was that it would make a difference. Law Enforcement Headquarters had likely known about his past when they’d hired him, and she feared they would be far more likely to focus on the serial number of a certain stolen—liberated—android instead.

  4

  Dash couldn’t sleep so he followed the ship’s dim night lighting into one of the short side corridors that led to a kitchen and mess area. He’d been lying on his bunk, dwelling on the choices he’d made that day—and not liking them.

  The light was on in the mess area, so he hesitated before entering. Despite the late hour, he sensed McCall in there.

  He knew she wouldn’t want to see him, but he felt the urge to apologize to her. When she’d walked in on them rooting through her android’s cabin, he wasn’t sure what he had expected from her. Indignation or self-righteous defense? Fear of being caught doing something illegal? There had been a hint of that, and he’d glimpsed an image in her thoughts of her and the android running away from a huge secure facility together, but mostly, she had been distressed about potentially losing someone she considered a friend.

  When she’d made that statement about the android being her business partner, Dash had been skeptical, so he’d pried deeper into her thoughts than he usually would, and he’d sensed she was being honest about that. And that she genuinely cared about the android. Scipio, she’d called him. A name instead of a nomenclature. Already, he was beginning to wonder if he’d done the wrong thing. All he’d wanted was to divert Axton’s attention from himself, and he’d truly believed McCall had been hiding something criminal…

  But as someone now working with the Alliance, he would be considered criminal in the empire’s eyes. He felt like a hypocrite for getting her in trouble.

  A ding sounded, and the smell of food—some kind of sausage?—wafted into the corridor. Dash’s stomach growled. He’d been living off the awful ration bars Axton had brought over when they had abandoned their ship. Even the prisoners groaned whenever Dash delivered some to their cell.

  A dish clanked onto a counter or table, and Dash decided to risk McCall’s ire to see if she would offer him some food. Axton, he knew, had taken some of her food, probably without asking, and had been swilling a bottle of wine earlier in the evening. Dash didn’t think their rights as law enforcers extended as far as pilfering someone’s food.

  He cleared his throat so she would have warning and walked into the compact mess area.

  He caught her closing a netdisc, the holodisplay winking out. He sensed Axton’s face in her thoughts—had she been researching him?—before drawing his awareness back and vowing to stay out of her mind. He’d already intruded enough.

  “Sorry,” he said when she looked at him with wariness from where she sat at the table, facing the door. Sausage links and a variety of minced vegetables rested on a plate in front of her, alongside a can of carbonated water and some kind of bar in a wrapper. It looked more like a dessert than the dreadful ration bars from the Truncheon 4. “I thought everyone was sleeping. I just wanted to…”

  His gaze snagged on three empty wine bottles sitting above a wine refrigeration unit. Had Axton chugged all of those? Dash hadn’t. McCall was drinking water, so she likely hadn’t.

  She followed his gaze, and her lips pressed together. But all she did was stand, grab her plate, and say, “I’ll go to my cabin. Help yourself to whatever. Though if you’re a drinker of wine, I suggest the Bergonian Table Red over the other choices.”

  Damn, he didn’t want to drive her to her room. “Because it’s the best?”

  “Because it’s easy to acquire on a lot of planets. With some of the kinds I have, you have to visit the family’s centuries-old winery in person because they don’t ship off world.” She glanced at the empty bottles again.

  Dash sighed, suspecting Axton had simply taken whatever had an appealing-looking label. Or a high alcohol content. Most cyborgs Dash knew didn’t take drugs or drink because of the unpredictable way it affected their altered systems, but Axton probably didn’t care if booze turned him into an unstable ass. Who would know the difference?

  “Wait.” Dash lifted a hand as McCall headed for the exit. “You don’t have to go. It’s your ship. I’ll go.”

  She stopped and stared at him. Actually, she stared at his chin. Even though he wasn’t trying to read her, he had that sense again that he made her extremely uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted, though he wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for leading Axton to her android or for being someone she considered an enemy.

  She lifted a shoulder.

  He tried to think of a way to get her to stay so he could more properly apologize to her, though he didn’t know how he would manage without admitting he knew more than a normal person should about her situation. While he’d found his telepathic abilities useful many times in his life, there were other times when he was keenly aware that they made him something not entirely human. He hadn’t fit in with the more powerful Starseers in the temple when he’d been growing up, and he had never fit in with the human population as a whole either. It didn’t help that he’d always had to hide what he was when among them.

  “If you have any more of that sausage and wouldn’t mind giving me a couple of pieces…” Dash stretched out with his senses before offering what Axton would probably consider a betrayal, if not treason of a sort. The cyborg was sleeping in the corridor outside the cell, ensuring that anyone who went to see the prisoners would have to step over him. “I’ll tell you everything I know about Axton,” Dash finished quietly.

  “What makes you think I want to know?” She squinted suspiciously, but once again, she didn’t look into his eyes. Her focus was in his general direction but not toward his face.

  “I saw you were looking him up before you closed your netdisc.” Technically, he’d seen in her mind that she’d been looking him up.

  “I had the holodisplay in privacy mode. There’s no way you could have seen anything from the hatchway.”

  He thought about claiming she was wrong but reminded himself she was smart. As good at her job as she was, she had to be.

  “Are you interested in him or not? Because if my stomach starts growling any louder, you won’t be able to hear me talk.”

  “I don’t need your help researching anyone,” she said and started for the hatch again, “but you can take whatever you want to eat.”

  Disappointed that he was driving her away, however inadvertently, Dash almost put his h
and out to stop her, but she wouldn’t appreciate that, and it would only make her feel more uncomfortable.

  He stepped aside but noticed she’d forgotten her bar. “Wait.” He went over and plucked it off the table so he could hand it to her. “Tammy Jammy’s Peanut Butter and Jammy Jam?”

  It looked like something a kid would eat, and for some reason, it amused him that the great skip tracer, finder of all criminals and deadbeats great and small, enjoyed kids’ treats.

  “Yes, so?” She rearranged her plate and canned water so she could take it.

  “Is it good?”

  “You’ve never had a Tammy Jammy bar?” she asked in disbelief.

  “I haven’t. Has my palate been dearly deprived of a culinary delight?”

  She snorted. “I like them, but it’s just that everybody’s had them. They run those commercials on the sys-net all the time, and there are distributors on all the planets, even out in the border worlds. Every kid seems to get them in their lunches. Where did you grow up?” Her brow was furrowed in genuine confusion.

  “Not near a distributor, I guess.” Dash wasn’t about to mention that the Starseer temple hadn’t been plugged into the empire’s propaganda-driven sys-net, as his teachers had called it when he’d been growing up. “Can I try a piece?” he asked, more because this line of conversation had kept her from leaving than because he ached to sample it.

  She hesitated. “It’s kind of a dessert.”

  “So it’s illegal to try it before dinner?”

  “Not illegal. But I eat it at the end.”

  “You never eat out of order?”

  “No.”

  She took a step back, and he sensed he’d misstepped with her again, that she had taken his attempt at lighthearted banter as teasing. She was sensitive about… He let himself brush her mind with his, though there was a risk she would sense it, especially now, without anything else going on to distract her.

  She thought he thought she was weird. No, she thought she was weird and it bothered her when other people noticed. She’d gotten used to not having to try to fit in anymore—it wasn’t as if the android or her dog cared—but having people here invading her space made her aware of things she preferred to forget.

  “I guess that’s the proper way to go about dining,” Dash said, “but I’m a notorious rule breaker.”

  “So naturally, you became a law enforcer.”

  “Odd, isn’t it?” He doubted it was in his power to change how she felt about herself, but maybe if he shared that he also wasn’t exactly normal, it would help him build a rapport with her.

  “If you want to try one, there are more bars in the drawer over there.” She pointed, not commenting on his oddness. “And there are some peanut butter and chocolate balls, too, if you prefer something with sugar. Just don’t take them all. They’re my treat to myself after finishing a job.” Her mouth twisted and she gave him an exasperated look, though once again, she didn’t meet his eyes. “Or for when I have to deal with stressful situations.”

  “Tammy Jammy bars don’t have sugar?” He decided it would be safer to keep the conversation on them rather than on how stress-promoting he was.

  “Just what’s naturally in the fruit the jam is made from. That’s the selling point to mothers of kids.”

  “And to skip tracers?”

  “They’re free of grains, neo-grains, dairy, sugar, and artificial sweeteners.”

  “I see. You’re one of those health—” He reminded himself that he didn’t want to highlight that she was… eccentric, he decided to think of her as, not weird. “Health-conscious individuals.”

  She gave him another exasperated look, and he could tell she wasn’t fooled by his mid-sentence adjustment. “My brain works better when I avoid that stuff, all right? Take whatever you want.”

  She walked out, and this time, he couldn’t think of anything to say to keep her there. He wasn’t sure why that saddened him.

  Because he hadn’t really apologized yet, he decided.

  On the third day, a message came in from McCall’s cyborg friend, Sebastian. Technically, it came from “Third Bear from the Right,” but she knew that was the name he used out on the sys-net. He’d responded in text and relayed it through routers on several planets and space stations so it would be untraceable. She smiled, proud to see him using the skills she’d taught him.

  “Ma’am,” she said, reading his response out loud to Junkyard, who was moping around with a toy between his paws while looking extremely bored at being shut in their cabin. “I’m glad you have survived your run-in with an odious cyborg. I can assure you that we un-odious cyborgs are special souls and to be treasured.”

  She glanced at Junkyard to see what he thought of the humor. He flopped over on his side and issued a dramatic sigh.

  “I never met Sergeant Axton personally,” she continued to read, “as he left the unit before I had my surgery and joined up, but I do remember his name being mentioned and some stories being told about how he was prone to fits of rage and killed a fellow cyborg who disobeyed his orders during the heat of battle. There was some question about whether his actions had been justified, but none of his superiors agreed with deadly force as a disciplinary measure.” McCall shook her head. “I’d hope not,” she interjected, then read on. “That’s what got him kicked out, but he’d apparently been written up several times for abuse to civilians and other soldiers outside of the Corps. His superiors had trouble controlling him. The surgeries and hormone injections sometimes cause severe mental changes in men, so that kind of thing isn’t without precedent, you understand, and the fleet isn’t as much help as you would hope. Axton might not be stable. If he’s on your ship, you should get him off. Fast. And stay out of his way. Be careful, ma’am.”

  McCall flicked off the holodisplay and lowered her netdisc. “Nothing we couldn’t have guessed, eh, Junk?”

  An ear twitched.

  Though it was good to know more about Axton, McCall didn’t know how helpful the information was. As she’d considered before, it was likely his superiors at Law Enforcement Headquarters knew all about his past. They must have stuck him out here patrolling the border worlds so he wouldn’t have to interact with that many of his fellow officers. Except his poor pilot.

  McCall had witnessed Dash walking on eggshells around Axton. She wondered what he was like when he wasn’t around the sheriff. He had a sense of humor that had come out a few times, but she didn’t know how she felt about it. She liked wit in some contexts, but more in novels and vids than in real life, because then she knew she wasn’t the butt of some joke. That had happened often to her as a kid. She liked to think she was better than her sister at grasping humor, but a lot of it still went over her head.

  Actually, since McKenzie had undergone the empire’s “normalization” surgery, she might be better at getting jokes these days. McCall would have to ask her the next time they spoke. Whenever that would be. They hadn’t had a lot in common before, and they had even less in common now.

  A knock sounded at her hatch.

  For an alarmed moment, she worried it was Dash—or worse, Axton—but her brain caught up to her instincts. She recognized Scipio’s three precise thumps.

  “Come in, Scipio,” she called.

  He entered, wearing a different one of his exquisitely tailored suits than the day before. Having intruders on the ship and dealing with the possibility of discovery weren’t enough to throw off his dressing routine, it seemed.

  “You’re looking sharp today,” she told him since she’d learned how much he liked the acknowledgment.

  “Am I? This is excellent news. The majority of my computing energy has gone toward cogitating on my problem, so I selected my attire with less care than usual.”

  “Are you still jamming the sheriff’s transmissions?” The last she’d heard, he had successfully kept Axton’s message from leaving the ship.

  “Unfortunately, I am not. He came into NavCom last night and accused me of i
nterfering with his transmission. Which I was doing. It was difficult to persuade him that I was not. Especially when his hands were around my throat.”

  McCall rose to her feet, a surge of indignation rushing through her. “Are you all right? Why didn’t you comm me?”

  “You were in your sleep cycle, and I’ve observed that you function optimally when you sleep for more than seven-point-five hours a night.”

  “Scipio.”

  He lifted a hand in his familiar placating gesture—he only had one of those programmed in that she’d observed. “I do not feel pain, as you know, nor do I have a windpipe that can be cut off. Though self-repair is difficult, especially when amputation or dismemberment is involved, I was confident that you would assist with putting me back together if he ripped me apart.”

  “If that asshole tries to rip you apart, you rip him apart,” she said hotly.

  Scipio tilted his head. “I did consider that, but I do not believe I could win. And since he is a law-enforcement officer, my programming would not allow me to attempt real damage to him. I assume you have done more thorough research than I did before they boarded, and verified that he is indeed a law-enforcement officer and not some criminal perpetrating a farce?” If androids could sound hopeful, he did.

  Which McCall understood perfectly. If Axton and Dash had been criminals who had wrongfully taken over the ship, they could have worked together, doing everything they could to get rid of them.

  “He’s a legitimate officer,” she said reluctantly. “No matter how checkered his past.”

  “Ah.”

  “I suppose that means he’ll get a response back on you by tomorrow.”

  “It is likely. I can attempt to jam incoming transmissions, but he has warned me that he will be watching and that if I interfere again, he will tear me into a thousand pieces. I would find it difficult to self-repair if I were in a thousand pieces.”

  McCall sighed. “I know. Look, don’t meddle anymore. We’ll just… He can’t do anything until he drops off his prisoners. He’ll have to escort them off the ship and into the hands of the authorities at the Frost Moon 3 mine, right? That might be our chance. We can stun him and the pilot in the back, and then take off. We’ll leave them at the prison. Maybe they can mine some coal while they’re waiting for another ship.”