Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  He truly sounded miserable. McCall wouldn’t have minded blaming someone for her week, and maybe when she’d been younger, she would have blamed him, but she could also look back and see all the mistakes she’d made along the way. She was here because she’d stuck her foot in her mouth and said what was on her mind instead of what was wise. It was an old habit and hard to break. And then she’d stuck an explosive on the back of a cyborg. Also not wise.

  Dash looked over at her. Waiting for a response?

  Ugh, she never knew what to say in situations like these. Was she supposed to agree that he’d been detrimental to her week—and her career—or say it wasn’t a big deal? She didn’t know if she could say that. It was a huge deal. But she didn’t blame him for it.

  “I wish I had a Tammy Jammy bar,” she said, then rolled her eyes at herself. Of all the things he might have wanted her to say, that surely hadn’t been one of them. Even if it was her greatest wish at the moment.

  He laughed softly. “I wish you had one too.”

  “So you wouldn’t have to listen to my gut gurgle?” She wondered if the twinges were audible to anyone except her.

  “Just because you want one.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  McCall caught herself turning her bracelet around on her wrist and realized she wouldn’t be able to do that if Dash hadn’t stepped in and manipulated those guards. Her mother had given her the bracelet when she was nine. Actually, it had been a bribe. She had adored it when she’d seen it in a shop and had bounced up and down as she pointed it out to her parents. Her mother had been trying to get her to stop sucking her thumb for ages, and McCall could still hear her all-too-familiar refrain, “You’re far too old for it, and your sister stopped sucking her thumb when she was a baby.” She’d offered to buy the bracelet if McCall agreed to stop the undesirable behavior. McCall had wanted it badly enough to make the deal.

  She glanced at Dash, wondering if he was reading her mind. Her cheeks warmed at the thought of him knowing that story.

  “When we get out of here,” Dash said, “if you find yourself in trouble with the empire, I know the Alliance would be happy to have you and your skills. We could hide you if need be.”

  “I could hide myself if I wanted to,” she pointed out, relieved he hadn’t been reading her thoughts. He might simply be too schooled to let on that he had been, but she would assume he had been dwelling on his apology instead. “It would just be inconvenient to do so,” she added. “I’ve played by the empire’s rules my whole life, almost my whole life, and they’ve left me alone to start my business and carve out a place where I can be myself. I need to see if I can find a way to work things out, maybe offer to pay for Scipio. I would have done that already if not for the military-equipment information locked up in his memory banks, which makes it more complicated than I wanted it to be. But I know enough people in law enforcement and the fleet—I’ve done favors for enough of them—that maybe I can work something out.”

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to keep a life you’ve worked hard to build, but this…” He waved a hand toward the bay, maybe toward the whole prison setup. “This isn’t even the worst of what the empire does. You know that, right?”

  “I do. And it’s not that I try to look the other way and ignore it… but what’s the alternative? I’m one person, and I’m not even an articulate person. It’s not like I could sway people through oration or write stories and convince them to change the galaxy. I’m just… me.”

  “The Alliance is made up of people exactly like you. Well maybe not exactly like you. You’re kind of…”

  “Special? Like your pus?”

  He snorted. “Unique.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But you know what I’m saying, right? The Alliance has lots of ordinary people in it who couldn’t stand the injustice anymore and had to do something.”

  “I hope it works out,” McCall said, “but your numbers are so small. It’s hard for me to see how you can win.”

  She didn’t say any more because she didn’t want to discourage him, but she felt the movement was doomed, that the empire would squash it and everyone in it as they had so many upstarts before. His ancestors, the original Starseers, had been far more powerful than anyone in the Alliance now, and the empire had squashed them.

  “If everybody feels that way, we never will,” Dash said, “but small groups of people can effect change. You’re the one who reads all those books, so you’d be more likely to know, I suppose, but I think that’s how every movement throughout history has started.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall, not convinced the Alliance wasn’t futile. And it saddened her to think of him escaping this prison only to die in some rebel attack that was doomed to failure.

  “I’ll stop trying to recruit you now,” Dash said. “It’s become a habit, especially if I like someone and think they have useful skills to offer.”

  McCall wasn’t sure whether to be more flummoxed by the statement that he liked her or by the idea that finding deadbeats who skipped town would be useful to an Alliance group determined to overthrow the current regime.

  “You like me?” For some reason, her mind decided that was the more important question to ask. As soon as the words came out, she frowned at it in disagreement. Also at the fact that she sounded like a little kid.

  “I was on the fence at first—your reputation is off-putting, you know—but then you jumped on a murderer’s back to help me in a fight. That’ll change how a man feels about a woman. And before that, you stood up to Axton for me. And you didn’t run fleeing after figuring out what I am. If you hadn’t looked so alarmed at the idea of kisses before, I would definitely give you one now.”

  “I—er.” Hells, why hadn’t she asked him to explain about how her skills could be useful to the Alliance instead? “I’ve always found it to be unpleasant. Kissing. And kind of gross, to be honest. Like drinking out of the same soda bottle but worse. Do you have any idea how many viruses can be spread via oral transmission? Mononucleosis, cytomegalovirus, myxoraengiviridae, oh, and don’t forget bacteria like Streptococcus and Pilocalyx. My sickbay is state-of-the-art, but my ship is MIA right now, and you can’t even get decent food down here, so I shudder at the idea of what kind of medical treatment they offer.”

  Realizing Dash was silently rubbing his lips, McCall closed her mouth. He’d just said he liked her, and she’d talked about disgusting diseases. What was wrong with her brain?

  Her only hope was that he’d meant he liked her as a friend and had been joking about kisses, not truly contemplating pre-coital acts. That seemed a reasonable assumption. She wasn’t young and vivacious anymore—all right, she’d never been vivacious—and she didn’t get asked on dates that often. Which was, for the most part, a relief, because she never knew how to say no without feeling like an idiot, and rejecting the offer was always her knee-jerk reaction. She did occasionally wonder what she was missing out on by not having a life partner, and she wouldn’t object to the idea of having company on the ship besides Junkyard and Scipio, but she’d always found dating awkward and horrific. The problem was that she didn’t have any idea how to get to the point of being a life partner with someone without dating first. It seemed a prerequisite.

  Dash was still rubbing his lips. He shifted his weight, and she worried that he was about to leave after what he must have seen as a rejection.

  “You say that man was a murderer?” she blurted into the silence. “Is that a guess or was it extremely foolish of me to jump on his back?”

  “Oh, yes. I recognized him. Razor McFadden. He murdered twelve freighter and cruiser captains and fenced their ships on the black market before law enforcers caught up with him. Jumping on his back was definitely of dubious wisdom, but it came at a moment when I was feeling slightly overwhelmed, so I appreciated the gesture. And the startled look on his face when you landed. That was priceless.”

  “You’re welcome. If I’m going
to be dubiously unwise, it should at least help someone out.”

  “Indeed.”

  He settled his weight back against the wall, and she let out a relieved breath. Her gut gurgled again. Or maybe her stomach was gurgling. She did feel hungry since she hadn’t eaten all of her sketchy gruel, but she wouldn’t have gone looking for more of that swill, even if she’d known where it was stored.

  “What made you join the Alliance?” she asked since Dash wasn’t saying anything.

  “Oh, it wasn’t any one thing. Just a lot of things over time. Seeing the empire bullying people. Taking men who couldn’t pay their taxes away from their families and throwing them in prison. Brutalizing people with Starseer genes even though their potential had never manifested and most of them didn’t know they carried the blood. Shooting protestors on college campuses for simply voicing their objections.”

  McCall winced. She well remembered the Perun Arcade Massacre. It had been on all the news vids for weeks, and even someone as voluntarily oblivious to current events as she hadn’t missed it. Sometimes, it surprised her that the government allowed the media outlets to report its atrocities, but they were all owned by corporations rather than the empire, and she wagered the Alliance had sway over a couple of the major networks.

  “I imagine crimes against Starseers would strike close to home,” she said.

  “They do. And it’s kind of funny since I hated all things Starseer, including my half-brothers, when I left home. I’d been treated so poorly in the temple growing up. But I think that’s what made me want to stop criminals and protect people who couldn’t protect themselves.”

  “That’s noble.”

  Dash twitched a shoulder. “The pay wasn’t bad either. As an independent bounty hunter. Though sometimes competitors beat me to the target.”

  He looked over at her, and it took McCall a moment to realize what he meant.

  “I admit I’ve never thought of bounty hunters as competitors,” she said. “The agencies and corporations who hire me give me partial payment up front under the assumption that I’ll be the one to locate the mark. I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that they sometimes have a bounty out on the side, but they’re potentially paying two people then, because I don’t have to return that upfront fee. It’s in my standard contract.”

  “I’m guessing they go to you when they’ve tried the bounty for a while and it didn’t work. There were a couple of times I was tracking someone down for months, and then you appeared on the job, and a week later, the person had been found—remember Dwarf Star Wang?—and apprehended, sometimes right before I got there.”

  “I do remember him, yes. I’m sorry you were inconvenienced. Is that why you…”

  “Why I wasn’t your biggest fan when we first came on the ship? Yes. As I said, I regret that and the choices I made. I’ll do my best to make sure your plan works tonight.”

  Her plan. Such a grand notion for such a vague idea. Flood the grid. Easier said than done.

  “Do you ever worry that by joining the Alliance you’ve made an irrevocable choice that could cost you your life and endanger your family?” she asked. It was easier to talk about something else than what lay ahead.

  “My family lives in a Starseer temple so hidden from the outside system that I doubt even I could find it if I wanted to go home.”

  “Ah. My sister works in Perun Central.”

  Dash grimaced. “The core of the empire. I can see why you wouldn’t want to make a choice that would endanger her. Clearly, you’ll have to talk her into joining the Alliance, too, when you come on board. We can all hide out at the same base.”

  McCall snorted. “Right.”

  Her sister wasn’t any more political than McCall was. It wasn’t that they didn’t care at all; it just wasn’t a passion for either of them. Maybe things had changed for McKenzie since her surgery, but McCall was always so focused on what she loved doing that she struggled to make time for less appealing obligations, like being up on the empire’s latest atrocities and the Alliance’s struggles to stop them.

  “As for the risk to my life,” Dash said after a thoughtful pause, “it was a concern, and this wasn’t something I jumped into lightly, but I felt like—I still feel like—I wasn’t doing anything that important with my life, and now I am. I can make a difference with the Alliance. And sometimes, you have to fight for something greater than yourself, you know?”

  McCall wasn’t sure she did. Oh, she’d read about selfless sacrifice in all manner of novels, but she’d worked so hard to craft a life for herself and was finally reaping the rewards—or had been—that she couldn’t imagine giving it up to join the losing side. Maybe she didn’t have the selfless gene.

  “And speaking of that,” Dash said, “it’s probably about time to start our breakout so we can get my Alliance brethren out of this pit. And ourselves too.”

  Her gut writhed for a reason that had nothing to do with poor food. “Yes.”

  10

  They padded down the hallway leading from the sleep bay to the latrine, then kept going past it. They had no weapons, no backup, and no way to get through locked doors. They also weren’t sure where they were going. Storming the control room made perfect sense.

  Dash shook his head and tried to reassure himself they could do this. McCall had enough doubts for the both of them, so he didn’t need to add his. It would have been nice to bring some of the Alliance people along to help subdue guards, but in addition to not wanting witnesses to any mind tricks he might try, Dash suspected he and McCall were the only prisoners who hadn’t been brainwashed to leave the guards alone.

  They turned a bend, and he glanced at a camera observing from near the ceiling.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before someone comes to thump us?” McCall whispered.

  “Not long.” Dash hoped humans would be sent rather than androids or robots; he couldn’t affect the minds of those. He didn’t know if he could diddle the minds of belligerent guards charging at them, either, but he might be able to make them pause for a second or two. “Saint Alcyone is rumored to have used her telekinetic powers to hurl a company of elite soldiers off a mountain.”

  McCall glanced at him. “We’re just going to tell them we got lost on the way to the lav, right?”

  Dash snorted. “That’s not going to work.”

  “What will? It’s my first prison break.”

  As they approached the stairs, the pounding of boots on the cement treads reached their ears.

  “We’re about to find out,” Dash whispered.

  There was nowhere to hide. Dash sensed two men descending the stairs, large men with blazer rifles.

  He stepped in front of McCall, lifting his arms to keep her back. The guards raced into view and seemed startled to see him standing there, hands spread.

  He focused on one man’s mind, putting the notion into his head that he was about to miss a step. His target flinched, his rifle wavering as he glanced down. His buddy must have seen the movement because he faltered too. Dash tried to make the second man think the first was tripping, and his rifle was in danger of going off in his direction.

  The discombobulation only lasted for a second, but it gave Dash an opportunity to get closer and spring into them, taking advantage. He managed to rip one man’s rifle free before he recovered. Dash tossed it over his shoulder, trusting McCall to get it, and that was all he had time to manage before the other man swung his rifle toward Dash.

  Dash threw up a straight kick, catching the barrel before it fully pointed at him. The guard’s arms flew up, and crimson blazer bolts slammed into the cement ceiling. Dash punched him in the gut before he could jerk his rifle back down.

  As pulverized chunks of cement rained down from above, the other guard wrapped his arms around Dash from behind. Dash threw his head back, catching him in the cheek. His assailant’s grip loosened, and Dash twisted out of his arms.

  He glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye, McCall rushing u
p the stairs. She slammed the butt of her new blazer into one guard’s head hard enough to stagger the man, leaving Dash to focus on the other. He knocked his foe’s rifle aside as the man was about to fire again, then rushed in close, hammering punches at his sternum and gut. The rifle clattered to the steps as the guard struggled to defend himself. Dash threw an upper cut that caught him solidly in the chin.

  The guard stumbled and fell backward onto the steps. Dash snatched up his rifle but hesitated, feeling guilty about clubbing a downed man. But he needed the guard unconscious or at least insensate until Dash had a chance to tie him up somehow.

  “Beside you,” McCall said from behind him.

  She leaned past him with a newly acquired stun gun in hand and fired at the downed man, the weapon’s white nimbus wrapping around him fully. His head clunked back on the stairs. She had already stunned the other guard.

  “You’re not bad in a fight,” Dash observed.

  Her mouth twisted in skepticism. “Clubbing someone when he isn’t looking, though it goes against my natural instincts, doesn’t take a lot of skill.”

  “You could have missed and clubbed the wall. Or me.”

  “It could still happen.” McCall offered him the rifle.

  Dash waved the weapon he had already acquired. “Keep it. We’ll each have one.”

  “I have the stun gun now—got it off that one’s belt. The battery pack reads fully charged.”

  “Sometimes, a rifle is more useful.”

  “Only if you want to kill someone, which I suggest we avoid doing, in case…” She shrugged.

  She didn’t need to finish. If they were caught and had killed people during their escape attempt, they would go from hard-working prisoners with a life sentence to a lethal injection delivered that night.

  “I’ll avoid shooting at vital targets.” Dash accepted the second rifle, though he felt ridiculous carrying one of the long weapons in each hand.