Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Sit down, Aleksei,” Rose said firmly. “Jae-yoon, hand out the rest of the bars, an equal measure. Cut them to make sure it’s equal. Like Dash said, people can figure out on their own whether to eat them now or save them.”

  “Uh, does Aleksei get any?” Jae-yoon asked.

  Aleksei’s face shifted from pale to an angry red. “You’re going to keep food from me because of his say so? We don’t even know him, not really.”

  “That’s true,” Walters said. “All we know is what he told us. Who actually recognizes him? Are we sure he’s an Alliance pilot?”

  McCall shifted her weight on the hard rocks. While she didn’t want the focus on her, she didn’t want it on Dash either.

  “We’ll find out if he is or isn’t when he flies us to our base,” Rose said. “As for the bars, everybody gets an equal share.” Despite the words, she gave Aleksei a cool glare.

  His bluster faded, and he sat down. Walters looked like he wanted to say more, but Rose turned her glare on him, and he wilted under it.

  McCall slumped back against the rock wall. She wasn’t sure they were in the clear, but at least it didn’t look like there would be more trouble that night.

  “Thank you,” she murmured quietly, glad she hadn’t snapped at Dash for sitting down next to her earlier. He definitely didn’t deserve to have her moodiness dumped on him.

  “You’re welcome.” He had been frowning at Walters, but he turned it into a smile for her. “My mental talents may be weak, but they’re sufficient for ferreting out liars.”

  “They seem sufficient to me in many ways.” She tried to think of something more to say, a compliment, a way to let him know he was… a lot more than she had expected him to be when she’d met him. But she had always been inept at complimenting people or even realizing when it was called for.

  Dash reached over and patted her arm. She barely felt it through the thick sleeve of her jacket, but it seemed to say he understood.

  “That’s handy,” she remarked, the words coming out before she could consider them.

  “What? That I, uhm—”

  “Kind of get what I want to say even when I can’t manage to say it.”

  McCall admired his profile in the dim light. He had several days’ worth of beard growth now, not something she generally found appealing, but somewhere along the way, she’d started to find him appealing. When they’d first met, she hadn’t been certain if he was attractive, but she decided he was. And that she didn’t mind sitting shoulder to shoulder with him. She even wondered how it would be if there were fewer layers of clothing between them and she could feel the warmth of his touch.

  He must not have been reading her thoughts just then, because his lopsided look seemed to be in response to her comment. “I think you’re the first person to call telepathy handy rather than an invasion of privacy.”

  She could see instances where she wouldn’t want someone knowing what she was thinking, but if the tradeoff was that he understood her better than other people did, maybe it would be a boon.

  “I’ve had people scream and curse at me before when they figured out what I was,” he said. His tone was dry but also a little wistful and sad.

  “That sounds like an extreme reaction.”

  “It was possibly during a moment of passion when, in my exuberance, I shared my feelings telepathically. And enthusiastically.”

  “Ah.” She had never been exuberant during sex and was always somewhat bemused at the romances that occasionally took place in the mystery and thriller novels she enjoyed, romances where people succumbed to the throes of passion in predator-filled jungles with enemy blazer bolts flying overhead.

  “Is that why you’re not married?” he asked.

  “What? Lack of exuberance?”

  “Yeah. Not liking physical contact would make it hard to enjoy sex, I suppose.”

  McCall rubbed her face, less comfortable with the telepathy now that it had shifted to more personal matters.

  “Sorry,” Dash said. “I’ll stop. I don’t usually root through people’s minds, to be honest. Some folks can sense it, and that makes it dangerous when you’re trying not to be sensed. It’s just that with you, you’re hard to read. You’ve got kind of a mask that you wear a lot of the time, and I guess I’ve been overly tempted to see what’s behind it.” This time, he rubbed his face. And looked embarrassed.

  “It’s all right,” she said, a little surprised that she meant it. “To answer your question about marriage, it was more that I was too inept to figure out dating in school, and then I’ve been traveling for my job almost ever since. I worked for a private detective for a few years, figured out I was good at skip tracing, then went into business for myself. I would occasionally think, oh, it might be nice to find someone to share my life with, but I never learned how to go out and look. Nor did my experiences in school suggest I would enjoy looking.”

  “I’ve had similar troubles. With meeting people while being busy traveling as a bounty hunter, that is. I did that work up until last year. Mostly, I got into the business to irk my mother, since she and her husband were positive it was a waste of Starseer talents and beneath me. Beneath them, anyway. But I ended up being pretty good at it, and like I said before, I liked capturing criminals who’d wronged other people. You’re right that traveling all over the Tri-Sun System doesn’t leave a lot of time for dating. And then, when you find someone and get telepathically exuberant, that is also problematic.”

  McCall was now curious as to what telepathic exuberance would entail, but if throes of passion were required, she doubted she would know how to inspire it.

  Dash looked like he would say something, but Jae-yoon walked over with ration bars. One full one for each of them and pieces that someone had painstakingly divided with a survival knife.

  McCall’s stomach whined, but it seemed more a protest rather than a desire to eat them. She felt sick at the idea of chewing down more of the particleboard-like things.

  “You can give mine to Dash,” she said when Jae-yoon offered her portions to her.

  Dash frowned. “I’m not eating your food.”

  “I think I’ll feel better if I fast.”

  “You’ll need energy to make it the rest of the way across the mountains.”

  “I store plenty of energy in my thighs. And my butt.” McCall closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the rock again.

  “If she doesn’t want them—” Jae-yoon started to say.

  “She wants them.” Dash took the bars.

  McCall heard his zipper as he stuck them in his pocket, and she knew he would save them for her rather than eat them himself.

  “I would forgive you,” she said as Jae-yoon shrugged and walked away.

  “For what?”

  “Telepathic exuberance.”

  “That’s because you’re a superior human being.”

  That surprised a laugh out of her, the first she’d remembered experiencing since all this started. Alas, it was more ironic than genuinely amused, but given how she’d been feeling, she would take it.

  “That’s not what the imperial hospitals would tell you,” she explained, since Dash was looking at her curiously. “They have a surgery to normalize you—that’s what they call it—if you show signs of autism as a kid. Most parents are eager to have their children fit in and be healthy and normal, so they sign up for it. The empire strongly encourages it. Like I think you have to have a special chat with one of their therapists if you decide not to send your kids to the surgeon. But my mom was afraid of hospitals, afraid of the empire in general, and never went in for physicals or anything, for her or for me and my sister. Her mom had vocal anti-imperial tendencies and was taken in for their brainwashing procedure, the one they say they don’t do but they do. Something went wrong, and she was half crazy afterward. She ended up taking her life when my mom was only ten.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dash said.

  McCall spread a hand. “I never knew her, just g
ot the story from my mother. Anyway, it’s understandable that my mom didn’t trust the empire or hospitals after that but unfortunate too. She got sick and didn’t go in for testing and treatment until it was too late. We lost her about ten years ago.”

  “We?”

  “Me and my sister.” Her sister, who’d once had plans to build a Perun space elevator but hadn’t spoken of it since voluntarily undergoing the normalization surgery several months earlier. “My dad passed away when we were in school. My family isn’t the halest.”

  “That sounds like another good reason for you to eat your ration bars.” Dash patted his pocket.

  “Sounds like a good reason not to. Those things are poison to me.”

  “Well, I’ve got yours here if you change your mind.”

  “I know you do. Thanks.”

  He hesitated. “Is this one of those times when touching would be less unappealing?” He lifted his arm, offering a hug.

  “I probably wouldn’t feel it through my parka.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s a yes or a no.”

  She leaned against his side. He dropped his arm around her shoulders and glared balefully at Aleksei when he looked over at them. She was glad.

  13

  McCall’s stomach growled like Sarkian pit dogs engaged in a fight to the death, but she didn’t care. Two of the system’s three suns shone in the icy white-blue sky, bringing the temperature up to a snuggly negative ten Fahrenheit as the rays gleamed on an opaque dome nestled in a snowy valley. The sunlight glinting off the ice and snow was dazzling—and headache inspiring—but McCall merely squinted and experienced happy thoughts about the potential to soon access the sys-net and find her ship. And Scipio and poor Junkyard.

  Did the dog think she had abandoned him? Had Scipio been able to protect Junkyard from Axton? She would make up for her absence by taking him for a long romp on a thickly forested planet full of squirrels and flying tree-darters.

  “Thank the suns,” Rose said, shuffling up beside her.

  Dash was up ahead—he’d taken the duty of scout—crouching on a precipice that overlooked the dome from farther up the valley, but the rest of the group had been slogging wearily behind. McCall hadn’t felt any perkier than the others yesterday, the second day of her fast and the first day they’d gotten out of their cave, but this morning, she had woken up feeling alert, energetic, and clear-headed. She didn’t know if it was because that odious gunk had finally cleared out of her system or because her body had switched over to burning ketones, but she didn’t care. It was worth the hunger pangs to feel normal again. She would need her brain working to find her ship and get it back from that vile sheriff.

  McCall nodded at Rose. “I can’t wait to feel warm. And surf the sys-net. While feeling warm.”

  Rose blinked and looked over at her. “That’s the most you’ve said to me since we began this journey.”

  “Sorry, I haven’t been feeling well.” Something that would have continued indefinitely if she’d been stuck in that prison, eating those awful rations. She couldn’t imagine how Egyptian slaves back on Old Earth had built pyramids while eating nothing but bread and beer. Or had it just been beer that was doughy like bread? Something else to look up once she had sys-net access.

  Rose snorted. “I’m still having that experience.”

  Yes, the rest of the group, even those who had rationed carefully, had finished their allotment of bars the day before. Everyone was hungry.

  Rose looked over her shoulder at her group of men, then back to McCall. “I would like to apologize for Aleksei’s accusation. It was unfair of him to single you out as a scapegoat, especially if Dash was right, and he took the extra food himself.”

  Of course Dash was right. But McCall couldn’t say that.

  “It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize.” McCall flicked away some of the frost crystals lining her jacket hood. “He should apologize.”

  “Yes, he should.” Rose smiled faintly.

  McCall hitched a shoulder. She didn’t expect an apology or particularly care. She was used to being the odd one out in groups. When they’d been kids, her sister had always tried to say the right things and wear the right clothes to fit in. McCall, two years younger, had seen it tear McKenzie apart when it never quite worked out, so she’d just decided to risk the rejection and distance herself from it all.

  “I wish I could extract those extra bars from him now,” Rose said. “I’m starving.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some decent food in there.” McCall knew there was a limited window during which she would feel good before she started to feel poorly from lack of sustenance.

  “Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until night to get in. Or attempt to get in. Even if this winter gear covers our green prison outfits, I’m sure the entrances are monitored, and it’s likely whatever computer or person does that monitoring will have our descriptions.”

  “True.”

  McCall did not point out that Dash might be able to fiddle with the thoughts of a human guard, since he had chosen not to divulge his talents to these Alliance people. Or any Alliance people, she gathered. She wondered how he kept it a secret when it had seemed obvious to her after only a short time with him. Granted, they had been involved in extenuating circumstances, but even back on her ship, she’d gotten a few inklings about him.

  Walters seemed to have had inklings too. He hadn’t said anything more since voicing concerns about Dash in the cave, but he reminded McCall of Junkyard when he was working on the same jakloff bone for hours, clunking the thing all over the deck of the ship.

  “Money will be problematic too. These backwater border worlds don’t read banking chips or accept electronic currency, I’m told.” Rose rubbed her thumb and forefinger where most people had such chips subcutaneously implanted.

  “Maybe. I haven’t been to any of the cities here—oddly, Frost Moon 3 doesn’t have a lot of digital tourism brochures out there—but I’ve usually found that more upscale shops have scanners and are plugged in. Admittedly, the time delay means they won’t let you use a chip if you look even vaguely sketchy, since they can’t instantly find out if the funds are available.” McCall looked herself up and down and then looked at Rose and the men coming up behind them. “We may need to think of alternatives.”

  Rose snorted again. “Yes. We all look sketchy right now.”

  McCall decided not to point out that even under normal circumstances, she’d had shopkeepers deny her when she tried to use her chip. Her hiking shoes and baggy trousers didn’t always convey great wealth. She’d taken to sending Scipio to do the shopping in such places or bringing physical imperial tindarks or the local currency. She had both in her vault on her ship.

  “Everything would be so much easier if I had the Surfer,” she said wistfully.

  “Your ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dash said it’s new and of high quality.”

  “It is. I wanted something fast so I could outrun trouble if it came my way. Unfortunately, you have to see trouble coming to outrun it. Scipio and I weren’t paying attention when that law-enforcer sheriff started shooting at us. Well, technically, I’m sure Scipio saw the sheriff’s ship coming; he just thought nothing of it since it was an enforcer craft.” McCall twisted her lips, annoyed that she’d let herself get into this situation from the start. She should have fled from Axton and dealt with the consequences later.

  But if she had, she wouldn’t have met Dash.

  He was jogging toward them, so she lifted a hand.

  “What are you two talking about?” he asked.

  In the bright sunlight, his shredded parka was clearly visible—he appeared even sketchier than the rest of them. And in need of a hospital. But without money, treatment would be difficult to acquire.

  “Trouble,” Rose said blandly.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Dash asked.

  “It’s a mystery,” McCall said. “Did you notice a door or way i
nto the dome? I haven’t seen any ships fly in or out.”

  “Maybe. There are tread marks in the snow from some vehicle that’s driven in or out recently.” Dash pointed toward one side of the opaque dome, the curving wall appearing no different than it did in any other spot. “I didn’t see a place where you could walk up, wave your hand, and have an opening appear for you.”

  “Just because the controls aren’t visible doesn’t mean they’re not there,” Rose said. “The domes are more advanced than the prison.”

  “That wouldn’t take much.” McCall imagined the group walking the perimeter that night, poking at the dome and hoping to stumble across a hidden door that would open at their touch.

  The faint whine of engines reached her ears.

  Dash jerked his gaze toward the sky. “Ship.”

  “They might report us if they see us as they fly past,” Rose said.

  “Follow me.” Dash waved to the group, then pointed at a route parallel to the valley. “I found a depression over there. It’s our best bet for hiding on short notice.”

  As McCall and the others ran after him, the whine of engines grew louder. They slipped and skidded as they navigated part way down the slope of the valley into a divot. There wasn’t anything like foliage or even boulders to hide behind, and McCall felt exposed to the sky. They would have to hope the ship didn’t fly directly over them.

  “I suppose this is as good a place as any to stay until nightfall,” Rose said when everyone was packed into the cranny. They could not see the dome without climbing out, but hopefully, that meant nobody in the dome could see them.

  “I don’t know about that,” Jae-yoon grumbled. “I could think of better places.”

  “On this planet?” Dash asked.

  “Inside one of those domes. I bet they’re heated. And filled with food.”

  The comment led to a discussion about what everyone would eat as soon as they made it into civilization. McCall decided not to point out that they would have a hard time keeping from being recaptured when they reached that civilization. Maybe they believed they could escape the moon and find refuge in their Alliance bases for the rest of their lives. Or until the empire was toppled and old crimes were possibly forgotten.