Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

A cloud of steam rolled against the observation window and then fizzled away to reveal Mimir’s exotic water homes on stilts. Bright light glinted off the hangar where Starscream waited. A thrill of excitement fluttered through me, but when I chased its origin, I couldn’t be sure whether it was anticipation or fear.

  The commander had paled enough for my smile to fade. He cleared his throat. “Clearly, you were a pilot in your past life.”

  “I think you’re right, because that was fun.” I flicked off the engines and stabilized the shuttle, then found the commander and Jesse watching me, mouths almost open. “Commander, you stay right here and keep this shuttle flight-ready. Jesse, come with me.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  I scooped up my borrowed fleet rifle. “Caleb is mine. I’m getting him back.”

  The commander had been right; Mimir was deserted. Doors hung open on the water homes as though people had fled in a hurry. Only the sound of trickling water accompanied our footfalls on the deck.

  We were a few hundred meters from the hangar when a rumble like thunder shook the air. Jesse and I both looked up to see a raptor class warbird descending through the bright sky. Vapor bubbled from its icy surface as it hit warm air. It looked exactly like the commander’s Twenty and may have even been his.

  “It’s coming in farther down the beach.” I veered away from the hangar and broke into a jog.

  “This is insane. You can’t go up against a warbird.” Jesse followed but lagged behind.

  “I don’t intend to,” I called back over the sounds of the ship’s engines.

  We jogged around a headland. The warbird settled on a vast landing pad anchored offshore, attached to the mainland by a timber causeway. Warehouses huddled along the shoreline. A group of well-armed men and women had gathered outside one of the warehouses to watch the bird land. By the looks of their casual attire, they were hired guns, not fleet.

  I shrugged the rifle off my shoulder.

  “Wait.” Jesse squeezed my arm. “You don’t need to kill them, you know that, right?”

  Failsafe disabled. Protocols breached. You will kill this man.

  I tugged my arm free. “I’ll do what I have to.”

  “Wait, just— Let me distract them. They’re just normal people trying to scrape a living and survive out here. They aren’t fleet.”

  “They’re armed. They intend to kill.”

  “Please, there are other ways.”

  Jesse didn’t know these people, and yet she cared about whether they lived or died. I did not. They were in my way. They were armed. Their deaths were acceptable in achieving my goal.

  Everyone is an asset, I almost heard the voice this time, but the memory flitted away, slippery and quick. I blinked. “How will you distract them?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Just give me five minutes.” She pulled her coat around her and backed up toward the warehouses. “Five minutes?”

  It would take at least that for the warbird to power down. “Five minutes.”

  I followed her as she turned and jogged off the beach and onto the boardwalk.

  We reached the warehouse within a few minutes and ducked low behind stacks of crates, all stamped with Chitec’s logo. Voices echoed and rebounded around the cathedral-like space.

  “This whole place is an accident waiting to happen,” Jesse whispered, resting her hand on a crate. “Don’t fire in here unless you want to kill us all.”

  I’d already considered that and flicked the safety on. “I hear five men, one woman, and a man I have identified as Creet. There’s another figure who hasn’t spoken yet. Considering his heart rate and breathing pattern, I’m certain it’s Caleb.”

  Jesse leaned back against the crate and looked high above us at the crossbeams. “I can’t believe I’m here, doing this for that bastard Shepperd.”

  “He means something to you.”

  She winced. “He killed a man for me, and the nine systems are a better place for it. Cale’s good, inside. He just doesn’t know it.”

  A jagged image cut through my thoughts. Don’t let me go…. I closed my eyes and worked to push the nonsense aside. Please, Caleb. Is this what you want? Don’t let him do this. Something oily and poisonous slithered through those thoughts—a sense of betrayal. It came on so strong and so fast that it threatened to push me under and hold me down inside the memory.

  Jesse touched my shoulder. “—And One?”

  I glared wide-eyed at her touch. Icy detachment shut the fragmented thoughts and emotions away. “Let me go.”

  She yanked her hand back. “I said I’m going to circle around them and see if I can cause a scene outside. Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I hissed. “Go. Do what you can. But I’m getting him away from them with or without your distraction.”

  She hesitated, unspoken words holding her rigid, but whatever it was, she decided to keep the words to herself. I watched her slip away and rested my forehead against the crate.

  You will kill this man. You will only ever have one order.

  I knew Caleb. As much as I wanted to forget, to deny it, I couldn’t. The memory was there, lodged inside my mind like a rock in a stream, with everything else flowing around it. I kept moving, pretending everything was fine, that I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t. The commander was right. I was out of control. And that rock, those memories, the way they made me feel, it frightened me.

  I shouldn’t feel fear. I shouldn’t feel anything. But I was afraid, because whenever those memories broke free, the truth would change me.

  A shout went up from outside, then another. The men in the warehouse split up, leaving just two behind. I straightened, breathed in, and stepped out from my hiding place. Initially, when the guards saw me—my blood-splattered clothes, silvery hair, and young synthetic face—they clearly had no idea what to make of me. Their hesitation bought me a few strides. Behind them, Shepperd was kneeling with a sack over his head, hands tied behind him. He’s mine.

  One barked a warning and reached for the gun slung across his back. I lunged forward, knocked his gun upward, sending a trail of gunfire into the crossbeams, and punched him in the throat. I snatched the gun from his weakened grip as he collapsed, and smacked the butt of the weapon into his friend’s face once, twice. He tripped over himself and fell in his rush to get away. I flipped the gun around, shouldered it, and aimed between his fear-filled eyes. Creet. He scrambled backward and bumped into some crates. With nowhere to go, he looked at me, his eyes hard. He wouldn’t beg; he wasn’t the sort. I knew everything in his file: divorced, two older children with families of their own, suspected smuggler.

  “One Thousand And One.” Caleb’s calm voice froze my finger on the trigger and breezed through the order pushing me forward.

  You will only have one order: to kill.

  It felt good. It felt right.

  “Stand down.”

  I lowered the weapon. Creet’s shoulders dropped but his gaze stayed glued on my gun.

  “Get your ass over here and untie me.”

  I backed up, never taking my eyes off Creet, and stopped beside Shepperd. “There’s a fleet warbird outside.”

  I yanked the hood off his head and pulled him to his feet.

  “I heard.”

  I snapped his wrist cuffs and looked up to find his eyes on me. A bruise had bloomed beside one corner of his mouth, where his lips turned down. Speckles of dried blood dashed his cheek. He stank of oil and blood, and still he smiled as though this world were a joke.

  “Where’s Fran?” I asked.

  His smile tightened into a sneer. “Fuck knows.” He glanced away, but not before I saw pain in his eyes. “Creet, you son of a bitch. You’re gonna let me walk right out of here, or my synth friend will put a bullet in your head.”

  “By the nine, Caleb.” Creet wheezed and wiped his bleeding nose on his sleeve. “What have you gotten yourself mixed up in, kid?”

  Caleb flashed him a wil
d grin. “My luck ran out.”

  “You don‘t believe in luck.”

  “Exactly.” He turned away from his friend and caught my eye. “C’mon.”

  I broke into a jog beside him. “We need to find Jesse—”

  Fire flashed up my right side a fraction of a second before I heard the gunshot. Errors burst in my vision like stars. I whirled and aimed my gun at Creet. His eyes narrowed, as though he were challenging me to retaliate. He knew I’d fire back, that I’d kill him, and he’d shot me anyway.

  “Don’t.” Caleb shoved my gun upward. “Don’t….” He snatched my hand, yanked me around, and tugged me after him. “That wound won’t kill you, but you shoot him, and he could die. Let the bastard go. We have bigger fish to worry about.” Cale made sure to raise his voice so his friend heard. “Move your ass, synth.”

  I took one last look at Creet, marked his mug shot in my mind, then slung the gun across my back and followed Caleb. We stumbled from the warehouse and found the sky heavy with warbirds. They hovered in the upper atmosphere, near enough to be threatening but far enough that we couldn’t hear them. The sea churned gray and hissed at the shore. Caleb swore. The wind tore the sound away. I followed his gaze and saw fleet troops spilling off the causeway and into the warehouses. There were too many.

  “The shuttle.” I nodded into the wind, back the way Jesse and I had come from. “Just around the headland. Go.”

  Cool synthetic blood soaked through my already ruined clothes. I touched the wound. My hand came away slick and glistening. I had to get somewhere safe for repairs. But when we reached the headland, we saw fleet swarming around the distant shuttle.

  “Dammit.” Caleb moved one step toward the mainland, but fleet was moving among the hangars too. “Shit.”

  We were trapped with our backs against the water. I stepped onto a residential deck and jogged away from the mainland, beside the empty water homes. “We can hide in one of these homes.”

  “They’ll search them.” Caleb stopped behind me. “They’ll rip this place apart until they find us.” He scanned the houses, teeth gritted. “We go under.”

  “Under what?”

  He walked to the edge between two houses and grabbed one of the upright posts suspending the deck out of the water. “C’mon.” He dropped over the side and was gone.

  I staggered forward and peered over the side. The gray sea bubbled and frothed. Then a hand waved from under the deck. I grabbed the upright and cast one last look at the hangar. Too many fleet. The sky was full of them; the ground covered. I couldn’t kill them all. This was the only way. Behind me, the storm howled and churned, whipping up the ocean, mixing the sea and sky into one swirling mass of gray.

  I clambered down the upright support and into the water.

  Caleb had wedged himself under the deck, propped among the trestles with one arm hooked around the support. Water lapped and tugged at his shirt. Spray splashed over us from all sides. It tasted like iron and salt and stung my eyes. I’d wedged myself into a similar position as Caleb, but my grip kept slipping on the slime-covered beams. I was losing blood and my internal temperature had already dropped by several degrees. I couldn’t stay here. The cold would kill me. Errors and faults hovered in my peripheral vision until I banished them all. I knew we were in trouble and didn’t need the reminder.

  Inches above our heads, boots thundered on the deck. I couldn’t hear the voices, not over the hiss of the waves and the howling wind.

  Caleb’s teeth chattered. He shivered to keep warm. I had no such means.

  I slipped, and for a few breathless moments, the water tugged at my body, threatening to drag me away. I reached for the beam, dug my nails in and hauled myself higher. Heat leeched out my skin like the blood from the wound in my back, and inside, my power core stuttered.

  Caleb’s eyes bored into mine. Even cold and wet, anger burned through him. Something had happened, something more than fleet and the smugglers, something personal.

  I hugged the beam and willed warmth back into my limbs. It wasn’t working. I had to get out of the water and stanch the blood flow, but if I left now, fleet would find us. I wasn’t ready to go back. I wasn’t finished. I didn’t want to leave him …

  I closed my eyes.

  Why does he matter to me? Why do I care? A synthetic doesn’t care. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t make mistakes. It doesn’t dream. Stars are wishes. Wishes are dreams. I’d dreamed once. Before. Before this body. Before these system faults and protocols and failsafes and errors. Before, before, before …

  “What happens … when you … g-get too cold?” Caleb stammered loudly over the storm raging around us.

  I opened my eyes. “I shut down,” I said, quietly alarmed at the hopelessness in my tone. “Everything shuts down. My core, my orders, me, it all fades to nothing.”

  “You … d-die?”

  Yes, I suppose I do.

  I didn’t reply. I watched his face betray too much, more than I’d ever seen from him before. Fear, definitely, in the tightening of his eyes, and anger too in the flutter in his cheeks. He looked away, up at the boards trapping us in the tiny gap between water and capture. His eyes closed and he bowed his head, then, almost as though he were afraid, he reached out a hand.

  I looked at his trembling fingers, at the honesty in his eyes, and closed my hand around his. Letting go of the upright, I slipped briefly into the chilling water, hissed a breath as faults sparked all over my vision again, and let him lift me against him.

  “Hold on to me,” he said, guiding my hand around his waist. He braced his arm behind his head and then curled his other arm around my back and pulled me in tight against him. It took some shuffling and adjusting, but eventually, he’d tucked us both in tightly against the trestles. Water continued to pull at my legs, but I’d locked myself against his chest and bowed my head under his chin. The beat of his heart sounded against my ear. His warmth soaked into my rapidly cooling body and raised my temperature by a fraction. Not enough, but it was something. He shivered and trembled so much so that I clutched the back of his shirt with my hands and pulled myself in tighter. The rhythm of his breathing and the beat of his heart—I wanted him closer still, as though I could feel him inside but didn’t understand how that could be possible.

  “Don’t let me go,” I whispered.

  He bowed his head. The abrasive touch of his stubble grazed my forehead, then his lips brushed my skin as he whispered, “I won’t.”

  Those two words: I won’t. They broke me open like a key in a lock, and I knew another time when he’d held me close. Fear had tugged at me then too, lapped at me like the waves here. Fear that he’d let me go.

  “I think I loved you … before.”

  His breathing hitched and his heart stuttered, but he still held me close and said, “I know you did.”

  Chapter Twenty Six: Caleb

  Her words struck right to my very heart. I had no defense, no way to laugh it off or fight back. I let it happen and squeezed my eyes closed around the tears I wouldn’t let her see. Trapped in three feet of space between the sea and the deck, with fleet bearing down on me, my past flooded in. I pulled her close when I should have pushed her away. She’d been sent to kill me. I could let her die in the cold, let her die like I had before. But I wasn’t that coward, not any more. The man who had watched a girl die to save his own career was dead. I killed him every time I looked in the mirror. He might have even died the second I’d escaped Asgard. Fleet Captain Caleb Shepperd might as well have died alongside Haley Hung the night her father had smothered her.

  I pulled the synth in so fuckin’ tight my muscles ached from the strain of keeping her close, but I wasn’t letting her go. I’d hold on to her as long as it took. If she remembered, if she fulfilled her orders, it would be justice. She should live. She had a second chance where so few people ever did, and even fewer recognized it when it happened.

  “Why haven’t you killed me?” I asked, words stuttered and broken from
more than the cold. She huddled motionless in my arms, so cold, like a doll or death. I needed to hear her speak, to know she was still with me.

  “I’m broken.”

  I brushed my chin against her forehead and whispered, “Maybe you’re the only one who isn’t broken?”

  “Chitec ordered you dead. They disabled my failsafe, breached my protocols, and sent me. I failed. I’m not like the others.”

  “I think you are, One Thousand And One, more than you realize. I saw your brothers and sisters. I saw what Chitec created you for. They are all killers, and so are you.”

  She was quiet for a long time. I listened to the wind howling across the deck and the distant thunder of warbird engines. I wasn’t getting out of this. Fleet, Chitec, Fran, this had been a long time coming. I had nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide, and I was holding my killer close.

  “I remember you.” She said it so quietly I’d almost missed it. “I remember.”

  She lifted her head away from my chest and looked into my eyes. So pale, her blue lips parted, and she looked at me as though seeing me for the first time, knowing everything. I couldn’t see any of Haley in her face or in her eyes, but she was still beautiful. Her eyes sparkled in the low light. Did she see me and not just in data files and measurements? Did she really see me?

  She touched her cool fingers to my cheek and ran them delicately over my face and across my lips. “You were younger, and your smiles were real. You laughed lightly and easily. Something did this to you. Someone …”

  Her eyelids fluttered and drooped.

  I shifted my position and pulled her in close again. “Hey, listen. It’s quieter. I think they’re moving on. Just a few more minutes and we’ll get out of here.”

  “Who is Haley?”

  She couldn’t see me grimace.

  “You are,” I answered softly.

  Her arm slipped from around my waist and she went limp in my arms. I almost dropped her. Shivering and muscles blazing from taking the strain, I tried to haul her higher out of the water and slipped in myself.