Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Shots rang out unaimed. Surely they must be unaimed with the trees between him and them. They couldn’t see him, but they might get lucky. He couldn’t run full speed. The jungle was too dense.

  He changed course, heading away at a tangent hoping they would keep going straight. His sensors updated and Eric cursed. Someone was thinking back there. They were following using motion detectors or other sensors. Nothing for it, he needed extraction and fast. He made the call to Stein using internal comms linked via satellite.

  “I’m blown,” Eric panted. “Need extraction fast.”

  Stein snarled a curse. “Do you have what we need?”

  Eric wondered if Stein would leave him hanging if he said no. He grinned. Good thing he had the data then wasn’t it? “I have it. I have it all.”

  “Understood. I’ll have a team cover your withdrawal. Coordinates follow...”

  Eric adjusted his route and added the rendezvous to his map. It would take him less than an hour to reach, but the Marines would take longer to get there even if Stein had a team on standby. He needed to delay his pursuers.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Stein out.”

  Eric increased his lead and started to think seriously about using the road. He could really pile on the pace if he did, but the road went the wrong way. He could still use it to lose pursuit, and then double back. No, he didn’t need to give them even more opportunities to find him. According to sensors, they were already breaking up into teams and spreading out.

  Damn them, now wasn’t the time for them to show some competency.

  Eric was so busy watching what was behind and trying to plan an escape, he failed to note what was waiting for him up ahead until it was too late. He skidded to a halt and looked up and up...

  “Fuck me,” he whispered, his face draining of colour. “Desmond!” His hand was a blur reaching for his gun, but it was too little too late. The huge dinosaur’s jaws snapped forward. The crocodile like teeth ripping and tearing.

  The screaming began.

  27 ~ A Cry for Help

  ASN Invincible, Northcliff System

  Falling…

  …Twisting, and falling…

  …Down, and round…

  Twisting, and here!

  ASN Invincible staggered and bled away the awesome speed a ship could attain in fold space with a blaze of light, her impossibly fast motion—impossible now she had re-entered n-space—was instantly converted to raw energy and blasted away from her into the void. She seemed to twist along her centreline one last time as if shaking off the last traces of foldspace from non-existent coattails.

  The blue energy discharge that always accompanied translation gradually dispersed. That discharge would be alerting beacons and system defence nets of an intruder throughout the system, but not quite yet. The light-speed wavefront, though fast, would still take a minute or three to hit the nearest beacon.

  Captain Monroe retched into her helmet and groaned at the smell and burning in her throat. With shaking hands on seemingly boneless arms, she threw the disgusting helmet away and coughed racking her chest with every breath. The steady beeping from the comm shack told her of a beacon query, but no one silenced it. Martin was out of it, and so was the rest of the bridge crew. Groans and coughing came from her left front, as Keith Hadden tried to wake from the stupor that fold space had put him in.

  Monroe had never, never, experienced a worse translation. The speed she’d forced out of Invincible was the cause, but the emergency crash translation back to normal space was necessary to save time, and time was in short supply.

  The beacon… she thought mushily as her people groaned and began to rouse. She stood on legs gone wobbly and tottered to the communications panel. Keying in Invincible’s security sequence, she dumped the prepared message into the queue and transmitted it to the beacon—fleet priority one.

  That done she staggered to her seat and collapsed into it. She had done what needed to be done. It was up to the authorities at Northcliff now.

  Aboard ASN Sutherland, Northcliff System

  Northcliff was a beautiful planet, Lieutenant Commander Oakley thought, and he was stuck up here in this tin can! He sighed. His work was important, it was necessary and most times very interesting and rewarding, but at zero-three-hundred on the bridge of an Alliance carrier, the only thing rewarding enough would be a long sleep in his rack.

  “Sir?” Communications specialist Guauri Kistna said, frowning at her panel.

  “What is it Guauri?” he said turning toward her station.

  “I have an emergence at the edge of the zone, sir, but no response to the beacon hail. Northcliff Port Control has requested I.D but received no response.”

  That’s odd.

  “Hmmm, put it up on the threat board and give me what you have on my number two monitor.”

  “Yes sir,” Guauri said and did that.

  Lieutenant Commander Oakley, third officer of the battle group carrier ASN Sutherland turned to the information plotted on his monitor and studied what it showed him. He stiffened when he noted the ship was wandering from the lane. It didn’t appear in control, and Sutherland’s sensors reported battle damage.

  “Wake the Captain!” He snapped and slammed his fist down on a red button.

  The battle stations alarm began wailing throughout the ship.

  Thank you for reading Hard Duty.

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  Ambassador 1

  Seeing Red

  By

  Patty Jansen

  Would you betray Earth to save it?

  24 October 2114: the day that shocked the world.

  Young diplomat Cory Wilson narrowly escapes death in the assassination of President Sirkonen. No one claims responsibility but there is no doubt that the attack is extraterrestrial.

  Cory was meant to start work as a representative to gamra, the alien organization that governs the FTL transport network, but now his new job may well be scrapped in anger.

  Worse, as Earth uses military force to stop any extraterrestrials coming or leaving, as 200,000 extraterrestrial humans are trapped on Earth, as the largest army in the galaxy prepares to free them by force, only Cory has the experience, language skills and contacts to solve the crime.

  But he's broke, out of a job and a long way from Earth.

  One reader said: "I have been reading SCIFI for about 35 years. Your ambassador series is my latest new addiction. I have read the 1st 7 books pretty much non stop." This reader is not the only one who says this. The series is addictive.

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  pattyjansen.com

  1

  DIPLOMATS AT Nations of Earth often joked that when politics sank into a lull, something was about to explode. The greater the sense of we’ve-got-it-all-sorted-out smugness, the bigger the bang.

  I was certainly far too comfortable, if jet-lagged and keen to get to my hotel, when I met President Sirkonen in his office in Rotterdam that afternoon. Nice and easy. I had received my commission from gamra with all the final details such as what time I needed to be at the Exchange. And tickets, by themselves worth more than my annual Earthly salary. Now I only needed the president’s signature, and I would be off to my new job. Definitely too comfortable.

  I had never been on first-name terms with the president, but while I sat there trying hard not to succumb to jet-lag, he chatted about my father, whom I had just visited, and who had finally retired from Lunar Base to his native New Zealand. Sirkonen opened the drawer of his desk and took something out, which he flipped across the gleaming wooden surface. I could do nothing but catch it. A datastick. I turned it over. The black plastic cover reflected the sunlight.

  “What’s on it?”

  “You might
find it useful. Think of it as some . . . personal advice, from me to you. We’ll talk about it later, when you return for your first briefing.” He shut the drawer with a thud as if closing the subject.

  This was highly irregular. “Mr President, can I ask—”

  He shook his head, and offered me a drink—Finnish vodka, best in the world, he said. While he poured, his hands trembled.

  I should have insisted that he tell me what was wrong, but who was I? An unimportant, sending-out-our-feelers type of diplomat, expendable and twenty years his junior. Not the type of person to draw attention to his problems—with alcohol or otherwise.

  We made a toast. The heavy scent of the vodka did nothing to improve my alertness.

  “Mr Wilson, when you come back in six month’s time, you must present your report to the general assembly. We need to know in detail what sort of regimes we’re dealing with.”

  I didn’t understand why he spoke in such empty generalities; I wondered when he was going to open that folder on his desk and sign the contract. Nicha, my Coldi assistant, was waiting in the foyer. We had a whole heap of work to catch up on. I was annoyed that Sirkonen had changed our meeting time at the last minute—the original meeting had been scheduled for tomorrow morning.

  Sirkonen stopped speaking.

  I stared at him, realising with embarrassment that I’d been off with the fairies. Was I meant to have said something? Was I breaking rule number one of the diplomatic circle: never show any sign of sleep deprivation?

  An attack of dizziness overtook me. My vision wavered, as if the world were painted on a silk flag that flapped in the wind, and all the furniture was rimmed in a red aura. “Mr President, I’m—”

  I just managed to put my vodka down. The glass hit the wood with a soft clunk, the only sound in the frozen silence.

  There was a small sound from outside, a click.

  As if stung, Sirkonen turned to the window; his eyes widened.

  “Sir?”

  The president opened his mouth, but a sharp crack interrupted his words.

  I didn’t think. I dived off the chair into the hollow of safety under the desk. The room exploded. Glass shattered, wood splintered. Something crashed on top of me.

  The world went black.

  Purple spots danced before my eyes. An alarm blared, sounding woolly through the ringing in my ears.

  What the fuck. . . ?

  Footsteps thudded in the foyer. The door burst open, crashed into the wall. People ran in. Many of them. Boots crunched over debris. The air exploded with voices.

  “Mr President. Mr President?”

  I squinted through half-closed eyes. I lay in a cocoon of semi-darkness, pinned down by something jagged that hurt my back, too heavy to push off. My head echoed with unfamiliar silence.

  Nicha?

  Somewhere in the room, someone groaned, a voice that wasn’t Nicha’s.

  A man called out, “He’s over here. Get a doctor! Now!”

  Replies blared through comm units.

  I tried again, picturing the thought sensor patches in my brain. Nicha?

  There was no reply, not even when I commanded the link to open completely. Yet Nicha had been waiting in the foyer. Well within the feeder’s range.

  I lifted a hand to the back of my head. My fingertips met my scalp, spreading slick wetness in my hair. Blood—I could smell it.

  Of course, I’d handed my feeder in before I came into the President’s office.

  The president’s office . . . an explosion. Bloody hell.

  “Sir?” A male voice, much closer.

  The pressure on my back eased.

  And then, “Help me get this off.”

  The pressure lifted. I rolled onto my side, blinking against light that angled into the room from an unusual source. A large hole gaped in the wall where the window had been, the edges like jagged teeth of bricks and mortar. Through it, dusk-tinged clouds looked obscenely peaceful.

  The room itself was a mess of glass, plaster and splintered wood.

  A woman knelt by my side, in the uniform of the Nations of Earth forces, but with a red collar that said Special Operations. “Are you all right, sir?”

  I sat up, rolling my tongue in my mouth. Dust crunched between my teeth.

  “I . . . I think so.”

  My head pounded. Blood dripped from a cutting board of slashes across my palms.

  Shards of thick glass littered the carpet, the same shatterproof security glass which was used in spacefaring vessels. Supposedly unbreakable.

  There were also fragments of the vodka glass, wet stains of the vodka itself, mixed with plaster from the ceiling, paper, and books—those priceless four-hundred-year-old volumes that had filled the shelves in the president’s office. And amongst all that mess copper-dark smears of blood—mine, I presumed.

  The voice that drifted from the other side of the wrecked desk was weak, but unmistakably Sirkonen’s. “No, no, you don’t have to . . . I can . . .”

  “I don’t think so, Mr President. You’re injured.”

  The President was alive. I was alive. No idea what the hell had just happened, other than that I was simply alive, and glad of it.

  The guard helped me to my feet and sat me down on the president’s sofa, my palms dripping blood on four-hundred-year-old furniture.

  I managed a weak, “My hands.” Looking at them made me feel sick; everything made me feel sick.

  “We’ll get another ambulance out in a minute.”

  “But . . .” I didn’t want an ambulance. I—

  Panicked voices. “He’s losing consciousness!”

  People ran across the room. Two paramedics in orange overalls wheeled in a stretcher.

  Someone flung a towel in my lap, which I wound around my bleeding hands as best as I could. The embroidered Nations of Earth symbol ended up on the outside.

  Emergency crew lifted President Sirkonen onto the stretcher, his shirt ripped and wet with blood. They covered him with a silver blanket and put a mask over his face. The president tried to wave it away, his movement feeble. His Scandinavian tanned skin had gone very pale.

  “Keep still, Mr President. We’ll have you in the hospital very soon.”

  Then they were out the door.

  A different guard, male, sat down next to me. “You’re Mr Cory Wilson, Union delegate?”

  I nodded. Normally I would have corrected him—gamra, not Union—but that seemed a trivial, pedantic issue right now. I might work for gamra, the organisation that governed the Exchange, the means of interstellar travel, but right now, I faced him as a fellow human, and without the input from my feeder I felt this even more keenly. Our president had been attacked, and my job . . . was another world, literally.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I need to ask some questions. Did you see anything?”

  “No, just the window exploded.” A feeling niggled in the back of my head. “I couldn’t see outside. There was a curtain.” It now lay mangled on the floor. Then I remembered. “Sirkonen saw something. Just before it hit.”

  Was it even an explosion? There’d been no fire. Just wavering air, and a red aura surrounding everything. No, that was probably because I was exhausted, my brain still operating on New Zealand time.

  I rubbed my face with the top of my wrist. “Where is Nicha?”

  A puzzled look crossed the man’s face.

  “My zhayma. He was waiting in the foyer.”

  The frown deepened. “Um, sir, are you speaking Isla?”

  I was, wasn’t I? Eight years of full-time training in Coldi, and I was no longer sure. The wrong language had the habit of slipping out when I was off-guard and tired.

  Someone else behind my back said, “There was a person in the foyer, sir. I couldn’t be sure about the gender.”

  “Union?” the other guard asked. I had the feeling he would have liked to have used the derogatory word ethie, from Extraterrestrial Humanoid.

  “Yes.”

  I said, “He’s my
assistant. I need him here.”

  A small silence, and then, “I’ll go and see, sir.”

  “Thank you.” I leaned back on the couch.

  I hadn’t liked that silence, not at all. Nicha was all right, wasn’t he? If not, I needed to get him to the Exchange immediately. Coldi bodies differed from ours in much more than their hair with iridescent highlights, purple, blue and green like a peacock, or their muscular build. While they could vary their body temperature, they reacted badly to hypothermia, meaning anything below forty Celsius. I imagined an emergency crew working on Nicha, giving him the wrong blood, not keeping him warm enough. The thought made me shiver. I had lived with Nicha for four years, spent most of my waking and sleeping hours with him as part of the zhayma concept. In the rigid hierarchical Coldi society, he was my equal, my companion, the other half of my job, my pillar, my hand that reached out to the many peoples of gamra. He was the reason they would talk to me openly; he was my translator for those languages and customs I’d had no opportunity to learn. An interviewing journalist had asked me what a zhayma was, and I’d explained it was like being married, but without the sex; but it was more. For Coldi people, it was pathological; they did everything in pairs of two.

  Why had I been so stupid as to leave Nicha in the foyer or hand in my feeder?

  President’s orders. Simple as that.

  Uniformed personnel with guns crouched over the debris near the window. Red collars on their shirts betrayed that they all worked for Special Services and they, I remembered, were the spying division of the armed forces. Two of them sat on their knees, waving scanning chips over the debris. Damn expensive equipment that was, nanotechnology from the glory time before the wars. Way too expensive to produce these days.