Solar Storm (Galaxy Mavericks Book 5)

by Michael La Ronn

  “Screw your paycheck.”

  “I take everything I said back, then.”

  “You do?” the chef asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, make it a bleeding dick. A bleeding, pus filled, Herpes-infested dick.”

  Gino stormed out of the restaurant and slammed the door behind him.

  HE HAD no idea what he was going to do without a job.

  But he didn't care.

  He'd taken off his uniform and left it in a pile on the curb. Then he walked through the congested streets of Traverse II in a wife beater and trousers, sweating so badly he thought he was going to get heatstroke. It was the middle of the hot season, when the sun hung in the sky for hours and baked the world with never-ending daylight.

  The pods in the valley just held onto the sunlight, radiated it from their cores. Street upon street glittered with sunlight, and he had to cover his eyes every now and again as he walked.

  He jogged onto the rail car platform and caught a car just before it zipped off over the city. He sat in the crowded car, rubbing shoulders with sullen-faced passengers who didn't pay any attention to him. He stared out at the maroon sky and wondered he was going to do with his life. A lone jet streamed through the sky and suddenly he wanted to be anywhere but here.

  There was nothing here for him anymore. Not since his parents died.

  There was only one thing keeping him.

  He sighed as he thought about Josie.

  She'd be finishing up her auditions right about now.

  No way she wouldn't get the part.

  He could find another job easily. Any restaurant would hire him.

  But hell, he didn't have to stay on Traverse II to get hired.

  He thought about the diamond ring he'd stored in his dresser in the apartment. His mom’s.

  He'd been dying to pop the question. Now seemed a good a time as any.

  JOSIE’S blue sedan was parked in the yard at home, a long rectangular duplex pod that was practically caving in on itself.

  She shouldn't have been home yet.

  He studied the car. It was parked haphazardly in the grass. One of the doors was open.

  He hurried across the lawn and entered the pod.

  The living room was empty except for Josie’s scarf, which she hadn't bothered to hang on the coat hooks next to the door.

  A splash of color caught his eye. On the kitchen table, bottles of alcohol.

  Tequila. Rum. Gin. Vodka.

  A bottle of vodka was already open and half-drunk.

  “Jos?” he asked.

  When there was no answer, he frowned and yelled her name again.

  “You better not be drinking again!”

  He noticed that the bedroom door was halfway open.

  Josie lie on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wore salmon-colored skinny jeans and a white t-shirt. A highball glass sat on the sheets neck to her.

  “What's going on?” Gino asked.

  “They said I didn't weigh enough for the part. I was too skinny and not all what they were looking for. Funny, because last I checked, this is the present where anybody can play any role.”

  She drank from the highball and laughed.

  “I didn't even get an audition.”

  “You're kidding,” Gino said, incredulous.

  “They cut me loose at ten…”

  Gino held up the bottle of vodka. “And you've been drinking ever since?”

  She took a long look at him, and then she closed her eyes.

  “You look like shit, Gino.”

  “That's because I quit today.”

  She sighed. “What did the other actresses have that I don't? I just can't understand…”

  He wanted to tell her about his day. He wanted to tell her about the crab salad and the fat guy and his jerk of a boss—but he couldn’t. He sat on the bed next to Josie.

  “Gonna be okay, babe.”

  “How are we going to make rent?”

  “The landlord will give us a few weeks. She's a good lady.”

  “And what about my next audition? What if I need to go and network? How am I supposed to buy drinks?”

  “How about you start with the pantry load you just bought? How much was that?”

  “You just thought about yourself,” she said. “You're supposed to be thinking about us.”

  She stumbled out of bed and lost her balance. He caught her.

  She wrapped her arms around him.

  How many times was he going to pick her up off the floor? How many times were they going to worry about money before her acting career took off?

  He didn't know, but as held her, he couldn't stay mad at her, and his eyes went to the dresser where the diamond ring was.

  20

  Gino made eggs in the kitchen. The sun blazed in the maroon sky. He glanced at the clock. Five o’clock in the morning. His pod was quiet. He heard Josie in the bathroom, walking in her high heels.

  He ground cracked pepper onto the eggs.

  Then two hands wrapped around his waist, explored his torso, lifted up his bathrobe, and caressed his skin.

  “You didn't have to do this, baby,” Josie said, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “I made eggs and oatmeal,” he said. “Gotta make sure you're ready for your audition.”

  She kissed him on the neck.

  “You're so good to me,” she said.

  “That's because you're going to get the part and we’ll finally be able to get out of here.”

  He turned around and kissed her. She had a satchel slung over her shoulder and blue sunglasses. The sun lit up her hair, just like when they'd first met.

  She kissed him long, and then scooped the eggs into a mason jar.

  “Can't wait,” she said. “Need to memorize the last part again.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “I have a good feeling about this, baby.”

  They embraced and from the doorway of the pod, he watched her pull away in her blue sedan and speed down the street.

  He leaned in the doorway, staring after her.

  Everything might change today.

  She had the audition of her life.

  He thought about his job at the restaurant downtown. He hated it. But he was ready to put up with it.

  Soon, everything might change.

  They might be able to get out of this cramped pod. They might have money. They might not have to fight over finances anymore—her expensive makeup, nails, haircuts, and massages.

  He was ready for that.

  As he looked up at the sun, his mind wandered to when he met her for the first time…

  The sky sparked. Yellow among the maroon.

  His eyes widened.

  He kept trying to recall the memory of when he met Josie for the first time.

  The clear maroon sky filled with lightning.

  He saw her swirling face among the sparks, large as a moon. He didn't understand.

  The memory hadn't been like this. It had…

  Lightning struck his pod, and an explosion threw him back into the pod. He hit his head on the wall.

  His head stung.

  He sniffed.

  Fire.

  Burning.

  The entire pod was on fire. The flames jumped across the living room and fire sprung up around the entire house.

  “God!” he cried.

  He scrambled down the hall, but the flames had engulfed the bedroom.

  He couldn't enter.

  He could only stare at the bedroom as it burned.

  His chest of drawers was burning too.

  The engagement ring.

  His only chance for happiness.

  Gone.

  He started to cry.

  A cloud of smoke entered his nostrils and he choked.

  He turned to push his way out of the pod, but the smoke and fire were so strong that he couldn't see.

  He dropped to the ground, coughing. He crawled toward the front door. The flames crackled around him.


  He found his way outside, and he pulled himself into a run.

  He pushed through the smoke, breathing in fresh air.

  He turned to look back.

  The pod collapsed on itself and the flames subsided. The smoke remained.

  “What the hell?” he said, backing up as the ground trembled beneath him. All around him, the subdivision of shining metal pods collapsed, flattening into the rocky ground.

  He took another step back. His foot wobbled.

  Behind him was the waterfall.

  The ethereal waterfall.

  A mighty river poured off into nothingness. He watched as all the flattened pods flowed off the edge of the waterfall into nothing.

  One by one, all the buildings of the city flowed by, toppling off the edge.

  And then he saw something bobbing on the surface of the water.

  Something blue.

  And glinting.

  Sunglasses.

  Josie spit out water and waved her hands.

  “Gino, help!”

  He dashed toward the river, yelling her name. He stopped at the edge of the water, at the edge of the cliff. He lined up himself for her, reached out his hand for hers.

  She reached for him.

  And missed.

  He screamed.

  He prepared to jump into the water for her, but a spark hit his chest and he flew back, flipped and landed on his face.

  “Josie!”

  And then she mouthed his name…

  “Smoke…”

  Smoke…

  Smoke…

  She shrieked as she tumbled over the waterfall. Water and debris consumed her and her screaming diminished as she fell toward the nothingness.

  “Josie!” he cried.

  But all he could do was stand at the edge of the cliff, looking into the darkness with tears in his eyes.

  His arms burned. He looked down.

  His hands were turning black and brown and red. He yelled, stumbling backward.

  His eyes narrowed.

  His teeth fell out. New ones grew in their place.

  His head swelled and he clutched his temples. Two bulges bloomed into the palm of his hand.

  Cybernetic implants.

  The air sparked around him and everything faded into black.

  He threw his head toward the sky and screamed.

  21

  Miller downed his coffee as he and Margot watched the graph on her tablet screen fill up with colored dots. Blue, red, yellow, orange, green, purple, black, and gray.

  Smoke had been twitching uncontrollably since they started. Miller almost felt sorry for the guy.

  “What is all of this stuff?” Miller asked. “We’re not frying his circuits, are we?”

  “There’s more here than I thought,” Margot said. “These are his memories. The memory graph goes from left to right, so if you look at the far left, there aren’t very many dots, which is kind of sad. This is right around the time of the crime—only a couple of dots.”

  “Which makes our lives, easier, right?”

  “I think so. But if we keep moving over to the right, the memories get more and more clustered. You even get some outliers—I guess those are what you’d call the memories that people never forget, the ones on recall that you keep going back to.”

  She tapped a rainbowed cluster of dots. “There’s a distinct change here. You can tell this is where he had his lobotomy. There’s very little to the left of this point, and a lot to the right.”

  Miller cursed. “Maybe we ought to stop this.”

  “Why?” Margot asked.

  Miller felt a pit in his stomach, like he was doing something wrong but didn’t know what it was.

  “Our warrant’s only for relevant data to the crime at hand. We really shouldn’t be digging too much deeper into the guy’s brain. Can you at least give me something for the case?”

  Margot tapped two of the dots at the left of the graph. Then she wrote down several coordinates and a time and handed Miller a slip of paper.

  “This is the evidence you need for a conviction,” she said. “These should put him at the exact two spots where the murders occurred. Tie that to the fingerprints and you’re done. I’d say you have a slam dunk on your hands.”

  Miller studied the coordinates. They felt right. But suddenly he didn’t feel so excited about the case.

  “I thought you’d be happy to see those,” Margot said.

  “We’re gonna convict this guy, no problem,” Miller said. “But this just turned into a mental health case. For his sake, he ought to just get the death penalty, but it’s not gonna happen now.”

  Margot frowned. “Why?”

  Miller put on his hat and coat and folded the coordinates, placing them into his pocket.

  “Because where he’s headed, he’s going to wish he was dead.”

  22

  Smoke blinked as a judge struck a gavel against his bench.

  “Quiet in the court!”

  The courtroom of the Coppice Southwest Courthouse was packed with observers and press, all murmuring and whispering as a side door in the court opened and the jury walked out one by one, sullen-faced but resolute.

  The room was humid, and not even the ceiling fans whirring at full-speed could dissipate the heat. Smoke sat in his chair, his hands handcuffed and his wrists tied with reinforced titanium chains.

  His attorney, a black woman in a black business suit and a ponytail, read the faces of the jury quickly. Then she closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her fist.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’re toast, Smoke.”

  Smoke’s eyes widened as the jury took its place on the bench. The foreman walked up to a microphone with a piece of paper sticking out of his shirt pocket.

  The whole trial had been a blur to him.

  It hadn’t taken long for the arraignment; the memory scan had proven that he was at the exact locations of the murders. His fingerprints were on the rifle they found in the debris of the service hangar. He was, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty as charged.

  He didn’t know anyone, so the planet appointed him an attorney. She smiled at him, asked him more questions than he cared to answer. He only spoke to her once, and that was to ask for a glass of water. She looked like she didn’t want the job almost as much as he didn’t want to be in custody.

  “The best I can do is maybe, just maybe get you off the death penalty,” she had said. “And even that’s going to be hard to do. Although if there ever was a clear-cut case for insanity, it’d be you.”

  He ignored her.

  When she asked him questions about his past, his mind sparked and his head hurt and he just closed his eyes, waiting for the question to pass.

  And how he was here, waiting on the verdict.

  The press took photos of the jury; cameras ranged along the bench recorded video of the entire event; families of the victims Smoke had killed waited in the front row, hand-in-hand. Smoke could feel their angry glares on the back of his head.

  The bailiff opened a window, and a cool breeze blew through the room.

  The foreman unfolded the piece of paper and stood in front of the microphone. He was a short, mousy-looking man, and he avoided eye-contact with Smoke.

  “We the people have decided that the defendant is guilty,” the foreman said.

  Applause erupted throughout the courtroom.

  The families of the victims jumped up and hugged each other.

  The judge banged his gavel and quieted the courtroom. Then he looked at Smoke gravely.

  “Mr. Smoke,” the judge said. “Justice has been served today. You have been found guilty on seventeen counts of first degree murder. There is no doubt that you meant to kill all of those people. And we the people hold no sympathy for your actions. It is our hope that you will find solace and peace in prison.”

  The judge paused.

  “As to your sentence,” he said, “Though we have served justice here today, I would be undoing that if I p
ut you to death. I could very well do it, but your attorney proved that you are, in fact, mentally unstable. Galaxy laws prevent me from ordering your death due to your mental condition. Therefore, I sentence you to life on the prison planet, Defestus. May your sentence be long.”

  Smoke’s attorney closed her briefcase and stood. “Good luck.”

  And then she disappeared among the crowd, who were all watching Smoke with relieved smiles.

  Two hands grabbed Smoke and ushered him out of the courtroom. Before the doors shut on him, he spotted Miller leaning against the wall in the corner of the courtroom, arms folded. Miller tipped his fedora to him and smirked.

  And then the doors to the courtroom clanged shut.

  23

  “Special Agent Miller, you did a great job.”

  Miller shook hands with Lieutenant Fisher in the courtroom hallway.

  “I don't get much solace from days like this,” Miller said. “But this feels pretty good.”

  “I’d say it's a cornerstone case to put in your portfolio,” Fisher said. “If you ever wanted to get out of the force, now would be the time.”

  Miller tipped his hat to her. “Now why would I want to do that?”

  An officer passed and patted him on the back.

  “Nice work, Miller.”

  Miller waved.

  “So what's next for you now, Special Agent?” Fisher asked.

  Miller glanced at the crowd of people streaming out of the courtroom. The air was happy and peaceful, unlike the typical murder case, when people left chastened, broken, or crying. He could only count on one finger the last time he'd seen a crowd like this.

  “No idea what's next,” Miller said. “But first, I'm gonna get some sleep.”

  Fisher touched his arm.

  “Really, Ryan, you ought to stop working so much.”

  Miller puffed.

  “It's a GALPOL thing,” he said.

  “What's so important at GALPOL that you can't go out with my squad for a few drinks?”

  Miller cocked and eyebrow.

  “A few dead bodies, a criminal or two on the lamb, and at least five killings that haven't happened yet. Is that a good enough answer?”