Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  James’s nanos and neurons spun. “We need a decoy of some sort.” As soon as he said it, he was struck by an idea.

  Noa’s eyes widened in real life and on her avatar. “Ghost’s ‘bots!”

  It was exactly what he’d been thinking. James’s avatar smiled. The body he was in wanted to smile, too, but couldn’t. “Yes.”

  Noa exhaled, and there was a ragged edge to it. Her avatar said, “You know, for someone who called this a crazy plan to begin with, you’re being really helpful.”

  His avatar’s smile dropped. “I still think it’s a crazy plan. But if we stay here, we’re not likely to survive until the Fleet arrives; maybe a year or so at most.” The mental map faded, and he was staring at Noa in the physical world, the hard link a tether between their minds. If he focused his hearing, there was still a slight rasp to her breathing. A thought occurred to him. “If we hadn’t come to Prime, if we hadn’t sought out help, your infection might not have been discovered. You would have died in months … or less.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know that. You would have discovered the infection either way.”

  “Would we have been able to find a doctor who wouldn’t turn you in?” James asked.

  “Who knows?” Noa and her avatar shrugged. “Unhappy what-ifs. Not worth thinking about.”

  But James couldn’t help thinking about it. The Noa before him wasn’t the vibrant woman from his memories, but she was alive, complex, unique, brave, and still beautiful, even with the sharp angles that had replaced smooth curves. If he lost her … his vision, his whole mind went dark, as though the possibility was too great for his neurons to contemplate. Failure. His body shuddered.

  “James?”

  He felt her hand on his shoulder. The world stood still. Noa was close, he could feel her breath on his cheek. His gaze fell to her slightly parted lips. The edge of her teeth, very white, flashed in the dim room. One had a barely discernible chip. A tiny flaw that would have been covered up on Earth.

  “You alright?” she said.

  He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. The moment felt real, and everything beyond the moment felt like a dream. The time before he fell on Earth, that felt like the biggest fantasy of all, but it hadn’t been … He tried to focus on the memories of himself as a history professor in Sol System. He had loved his career, he knew that intellectually. He remembered his mind had always been racing with ideas for his next paper or presentation.

  He “had” loved his career, past tense. The dream was fading. Noa’s hand on his arm by contrast was in brilliant focus.

  He put a hand on top of hers. “I’m here,” he said. He met Noa’s gaze and her dark eyes did not avoid his. “I’m alive.” His gaze dropped again to her lips that were so close. “I’m more alive than ever before. It’s a cliché, isn’t it?” At least according to the books he’d devoured before. There was some comfort in that; the dream that was the past was helping him cope with the reality of the present. He would have smiled wryly if he could.

  Noa gave him a lopsided grin, and something warm sparked through the hard link. “Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  The spark of emotion, that was also real. He wanted more of that—of her. He couldn’t leave her, couldn’t abandon her, even if it meant death. The same books, that history that he was connected to, told him his attachment bordered on obsession. His hand tightened on top of hers. He wasn’t the type to become obsessed with a woman. And, as right as she made him feel, the obsessive nature of his emotions also filled him with apprehension. Something was off. “I don’t know if it is the extreme situation, though … I worry it is more—”

  From behind him came 6T9’s voice, “Oh, you’re hard linking! You should have told me. I have some apps with built-in themes. Roman coliseums with gladiator avatars, cowboy ranches, dragon lairs with shapeshifting dragon knights … ”

  Noa projected what she saw over the hard link—6T9 with Oliver practically draped over his shoulder. Despite 6T9’s rather loud declaration, the child didn’t stir.

  “Go away, 6T9,” Noa said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said 6T9, and through the link James saw him disappearing down the hall.

  Noa’s hand was still on his shoulder, and his hand was still on top of hers. He could feel the bones beneath her skin, and the light throb of her pulse. To think of her frailty was too much. To think of everything that felt real being wrong was also too much. He understood now, at some deeper, intrinsic, hard-wired level, why Noa joked in the face of danger and despair. It was to avoid launching one’s mind on inconvenient mental trajectories. Seeing her laugh would be infinitely better than worrying.

  Cocking an eyebrow, he said, “I think that reviewing the sewer maps would have been much more interesting if our avatars had been dressed as gladiators.”

  Noa laughed, and let her good humor slip across the hard link. It fused with the sense of victory he always had when he made her laugh, and that emotion and his own laughter exploded in his mind like fireworks. He let the sensation slip back across the link.

  Pulling her hand away, Noa gasped and sat back fast. The cable between them drew tight.

  He felt confusion across the hard link, and then nothing. She’d shut him out. “What was that feeling?” she asked.

  The question echoed in his mind through her avatar, and in his ears, as she’d spoken the words aloud, too.

  “I just … laughed,” he said.

  Noa stared at him wide eyed. From the front of the house came the sound of a hover landing, and then the click of a latch as the front door opened. James heard Hisha’s footsteps in the foyer. “Noa, you need your treatment … now!” the doctor called.

  Noa yanked the hard link out. Leaning forward, she whispered, “Don’t worry, I don’t think anything is wrong,” she said. “You just startled me.”

  And then she was hopping off the bed. At the door, she stopped and leaned on the frame, as though in pain—or weariness—and the awkwardness he felt over the situation was replaced by dread. She could still die. His mind went dark, and he heard a single word echo between his nanos and neurons.

  Failure.

  He shook his head. Obsessive. He was being obsessive … or maybe it was just stress, and adrenaline. Rising from the bed, he followed her. The reality that he was in didn’t give him a choice.

  Noa held a plastic ventilator mask to her face. Her nostrils were filled with the slightly acrid smell of her treatment, and it left a bitter taste on her tongue. Although the day had been sunny just hours ago, clouds had rolled in; and she could hear a gentle rain on the roof. Through the cracks in the blinds, she watched the afternoon gray turn to the dark blues of a rainy evening. The wet season was coming. In a few weeks the Guard wouldn’t have to patrol the sewers—they’d be flooded.

  “You’re almost done,” Hisha said. “You should feel the treatment begin to work immediately, but you won’t be better.”

  Noa nodded. She could already feel the beginnings of relief.

  While the inhalation device quietly hummed and delivered the rest of her treatment, she reviewed the plans she’d made. She tried not to think about the emotional surge she’d felt over the hard link. She’d hallucinated again; this time, she had hung suspended in zero G and watched a star go supernova. It had been strange and surreal and … more. Beneath her mask, she licked her lips, flushed and scowled; she had no time for foolishness. Shifting in the chair, she tried to relax. Carl Sagan, padding around the room, stood up on his four hind legs and nudged her hand. She ran her fingers between his soft ears—and her thoughts drifted back to that strange emotion and hallucination like a leaf caught in a stream. She told herself that she wouldn’t even think the word “alien” and of course did think that … She searched the room with her eyes. James wasn’t with her now. Cocking her head, she heard him eating in the kitchen. He had complained that the cold in the house made him want to “eat like a horse.” She guessed a guy who played polo
would know about horse appetites. Beneath the mask, she smiled. Polo was one of the most expensive sports she could think of, especially on Earth. Even on Luddeccea a horse was an expensive item. Horses ate a lot, and required a lot of pastureland and care. Perhaps that wealth was the key to James’s strange, intense emotions; he had some hyper-weird expensive augments. Crazy Earther.

  “You’re done,” said Hisha, walking back into the room, holding Oliver’s hand.

  “Shixty,” the toddler gurgled, looking over his shoulder to the kitchen.

  “Hush!” said Hisha.

  “Shixty!” said Oliver.

  From the kitchen came 6T9’s voice. “Does he need a nappy change?”

  James’s voice floated from the other room. “I think that’s his name for you.”

  “Are you sure? It sounds like he is saying a word Eliza finds too offensive for me to say,” the ‘bot replied.

  Hisha picked up her child, her face crumpling in a way that foretold tears. “Hush, don’t say that, Ollie,” she murmured.

  Noa took off the mask. Through the front door, she heard the sound of another hover outside. “That is Eliza,” said 6T9, passing down the hallway between the kitchen and the living room.

  Exhaling in relief that Eliza had made it back, Noa tucked the mask away. She joined 6T9 and Hisha a few minutes later in the foyer just as Eliza burst in. The older woman immediately reached for 6T9. He pulled her into an embrace and Eliza leaned against him. Her breathing was labored.

  Looking over Eliza’s shoulder, Noa saw—much to her disbelief—that the hover didn’t have a single nick. But her heart dropped in dismay. “You didn’t rendezvous with any of the Fleet members Manuel assigned to you?”

  Eliza shook her head, still panting loudly.

  “Check her for a cryssallis infection!” said 6T9, turning to Hisha.

  “I’m fine,” Eliza said, turning to Noa. “They weren’t there! All of them … gone. I went into their homes and to their work places, and then I was stopped.”

  Noa’s eyes widened.

  Still trying to catch her breath, Eliza said, “I told the authorities … I have a grandchild … in the Fleet … wanted to visit him.”

  Hisha snapped a breath tester over Eliza’s mouth. It blinked green after a few short seconds and Hisha pulled it away. “She’s clean.”

  “I’m fine!” Eliza snapped, but she was still breathing deeply.

  “Sweeping you off your feet!” 6T9 declared, putting a hand behind her back and another behind her knees.

  “I’m fine!” Eliza said again, but this time more softly. 6T9 gathered her in his arms with such slow grace and gentleness, it looked like he was performing a dance.

  Eliza took a deep breath and then turned to Noa. “I’m so sorry,” Eliza said. “Their houses were all vacant.” There were tears standing in her eyes.

  Noa took Eliza’s hand. Her skin felt papery and thin. “I know you did your best, and if it had been anyone else, they would have been arrested.”

  Behind Noa, James’s voice rumbled like a storm. “This isn’t good. If she went to their homes and was stopped … ”

  “Their homes may have been under surveillance,” Noa finished, still holding the older woman’s hand. “Which could mean they followed Eliza back here.” She felt her heart rate pick up in her chest. The acrid taste of the treatment was replaced by adrenaline. She felt her senses sharpen the way they used to just before a piloting mission. It felt good, and she realized just how much the illness had been hurting her. She almost smiled.

  “I didn’t mean to … ” Eliza protested.

  Noa gently squeezed her hand. “There is nothing you could have done. But we will have to leave.”

  Eyes wide, lip trembling, Hisha said, “We have to wait for Manuel.”

  “Yes, we do,” Noa agreed.

  “Really?” said James, peering between the blinds by the door. He didn’t turn when Hisha’s head whipped around and she aimed a glare at him.

  “We need a crew,” Noa responded.

  Hisha’s shoulders sank. She met Noa’s eyes, the death glare she’d shot at James completely gone. Dropping Eliza’s hand, Noa put a hand on her shoulder. “But be ready to move out.”

  Nodding, Hisha tore out of the room and up the stairs, leaving Oliver at Noa’s feet.

  “Mub out,” said Oliver, sucking on his knuckles again. Noa looked down at him. He barely came past her knees. He grinned up at her, chubby cheeks splitting in a lopsided, oblivious grin. The almost-smile on her face melted and her chest constricted. She had to get this adorable lump of uselessness aboard a spaceship while taking fire—and Eliza as well. If 6T9 malfunctioned …

  “Blasted heap of a leaking fission reactor,” she muttered, and silently prayed that Manuel would bring her some Fleet personnel.

  At her feet, Oliver giggled.

  A few minutes after Eliza’s arrival, Noa heard the sound of Manuel’s hover. She peeked through the blinds on the second floor and saw he wasn’t alone in the craft. Her heart soared. Carl Sagan apparently caught her mood, because he hopped and gave a happy hiss. She reached out to him and he crawled up her arm and curled behind her neck. She scratched him behind the ears. “You’re coming with us, Buddy. The Ark is a tourist attraction now and has a snack shop aboard.” Her nose wrinkled. “And that means rats.” Carl Sagan bounced and hissed happily as she strode down the hallway to the stairs.

  Moments later, downstairs, her heart sank, again.

  Noa’s eyes swept down the line of men and women in Manuel’s foyer as the werfle sniffed at them. Putting her hands behind her back, she tried to hide her dismay. There were six of them, four men and two women; all wore hats or hairstyles that hid their neural interfaces. Noa reckoned that only two of them were Fleet—an old man and a young woman who looked all of sixteen years old. Noa could tell they were Fleet by the way they stood—or in the case of the woman, how she sat in a wheelchair—at attention. Gripping her wrist tighter, Noa went first to the man, Manuel beside her.

  “This is Gunnery Sergeant Phil Leung,” Manuel said. The engineer’s voice was shaky. He knew he’d let her down—or that circumstances had let them down. Since Eliza’s targets had disappeared, Noa guessed that these were the only Fleet personnel he’d been able to find. She wished she could take him aside and tell him not to let his nervousness show in front of this motley crew. Normally, she would ethernet such information to her second-in-command—as soon as they were out of space and out of range of amplifiers, she would hook up a local ethernet on the Ark. In front of her, Leung snapped a neat salute and she gave him a tight nod. “Commander,” he said, “it’s an honor to serve with another veteran of Six.”

  Scanning her data banks, she pulled up Leung’s file and, for the first time, felt hope. Leung had a potbelly that doubled his girth. His East Asian eyes were bright hazel flecked with orange, but bloodshot. His golden skin was marred by a bulbous red nose that spoke of too much drink, and his hair was thin and graying at the temples. He was out of shape, and possibly drank too liberally; but he was a veteran of the Io Company and had served in Six during the Asteroid War. She felt like singing Hallelujah. Gunny Leung’s platoon had been in the thick of it—cleaning up the pirate compounds after Noa and her pilots had blasted the pirates halfway to kingdom come. She gave him a curt nod instead of singing, but she knew he could see the slight smile on her lips. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  Gunny’s eyes went to Carl Sagan. The werfle gave a happy hiss and leapt onto Gunny before Noa could stop him. Gunny smiled as the creature climbed to its favorite spot, behind his neck. “We goin’ someplace where there’ll be rats, Commander?” he asked, scratching the werfle behind the ears as it relocated on his broader shoulders. Noa didn’t answer that, but her lips turned up. Werfles weren’t as common as cats on starships … but they were just as appreciated.

  “And this is Ensign June Chavez,” said Manuel, moving Noa down the line. Noa looked down at the woman in the wheelchair, sitting
at attention. Chavez’s legs were cut off mid-thigh. Most people tended to look like blends of all the human races, and as a result, didn’t look like any race in particular. Chavez was the type of person who had distinct features of all the races. She had hair that was almost as tightly curled as Noa’s, but it was red. Her tan face was dotted with freckles, and she had generous full lips. Her eye shape suggested East Asian heritage, but they were a vivid green.

  “Do you have prosthetics, Ensign?” Noa asked as she pulled up Chavez’s history. Chavez had lost her legs when she’d been caught in a landslide on System Ten’s fourth planet. She’d been helping some colonists evacuate a settlement at the time. No combat experience—but notes in her file said she’d served bravely and had volunteered to be among the last to lift out.

  “Yes, Sir, in the hover, Sir,” said Chavez. “Temporary ones, but they work decently enough after they warm up, if they don’t get wet. I was waiting to rejoin the Fleet after surgery for the permanent ones.” The words tumbled out of her mouth so quickly it took a few seconds for Noa to catch it all.

  “We had to hide them in case we were stopped,” Manuel said.

  Noa exhaled in relief. “Go put them on,” Noa said. “Now.”

  “Yes, Sir, right away,” said Chavez, wheeling herself quickly into the garage.

  Noa’s eyes went to the other three men, and the one woman. They all looked terribly young. Behind her back, her fingers went to fidget with her rings and found them not there.

  “These are rebellion sympathizers from my shop,” Manuel said. “They should do as crew.” His voice was gruff, and Noa heard him gulp. “This is Bo,” he said, indicating with his head to the tallest of the young people. He had typical Euro-Asian African looks—black wavy hair, green eyes, and he appeared to be in good shape, at least.

  Giving a salute that looked sincere, but was obviously unpracticed, Bo broke into a lopsided grin. “I was on my way to join the Fleet when the time gate closed. I’m ready to get off this rock.” The grin got wider. “Really excited.” He bounced on his feet. Noa’s hands tightened behind her back and she made a mental note to not give him a firearm. Inside her head, her chronometer was ticking down fast. Noa’s eyes went to the other three sympathizers.