Starbearer

by Rock Forsberg

  ‘Ouch,’ he groaned, as Evie’s knee hit his crotch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Evie said, and rolled over.

  The door to the back room opened. A soldier pointed a gun’s torch at them. ‘Don’t move!’

  The sudden bright light blinded Evie, but Naido moved. The soldier fell and shot into the ceiling. Before he had a chance to recover, Naido kicked the gun from his hands, and took him into a strangling grip. ‘What are you looking for?’

  The soldier gagged and shook his head.

  ‘Answer me!’ Naido said, smacking his face. ‘What are you looking for?’ He raised his hand for another hit.

  ‘Don’t!’ the soldier cried out.

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘We’re looking for the girl with the chip.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Naido pulled the gun from his hip, flicked its settings and fired at the soldier’s breast. He went limp immediately. Naido stood up. ‘There will be more of them soon—we have to move.’

  Evie took his hand and stood up. She checked her pocket: the chip was still there. ‘Can we go to the Megaplex if the navy is after us?’

  ‘Got any better ideas?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we could sneak out.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’

  Evie chuckled; when she had first met him, she would never have considered the possibility they’d be running from the police in Spit City. She was grateful for him, but also wondered why he was doing this.

  Naido was stepping towards the door. ‘It’s a tough one, but I know a thing or two about sneaking around in this city.’

  ‘Why risk everything to help me?’

  He stopped, and his face turned serious. ‘I was with you in Remola, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The navy think they removed the threat, but they’re clueless. It’s up to people like us to save the universe. Besides, without you, Daler would still be locked up. So, I guess I owe you, and…’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We really should move.’

  Naido took a crouched position like one of those urban soldiers, hunched over the mini-rifle he had grabbed. He peeked out the door. ‘The coast is clear.’

  The corridor seemed eerily quiet, and any noise from behind the walls made Evie jump. But the soldiers were nowhere around.

  ‘How do we get to the Megaplex?’

  ‘I’m hailing a ride,’ Naido said, and hid the mini-rifle under his jacket. He pulled up a comms device that illuminated his face with a blue light.

  Evie jumped as sudden shouting echoed through the corridor. ‘The marines are on to us.’

  ‘The taxi should be on this floor’s port at the same time as us—if we run,’ Naido said, and pushed the comms device into his pocket. ‘So let’s run!’

  Naido led the way and Evie followed. For a chunky middle-aged guy, he ran surprisingly fast, making her feel like a laggard for not training enough.

  They reached the small open port. a simple opening on the wall with the ledge extending a few metres outside like a balcony without the railings. A robot-driven taxi pod was just easing in to the portside—just as Naido had said it would—but to their dismay, a police craft was parked right in front of it.

  ‘Just run for it,’ he said.

  The wind blew hard on the ledge. At the sight of Naido, or perhaps the proximity of his device, the taxi pod opened a door. Evie was about ten metres from the pod when the door to the police vehicle opened and two armed officers came out.

  ‘Police, freeze!’

  Evie didn’t stop. Shots rang out. Naido jumped into the taxi. Evie just ran as fast as she could, hoping to avoid getting hit. Naido beckoned her in as the door was already descending. She barely made it before the door closed, and hit her collarbone hard against one of the seatbacks. Cursing the pain, she got her bearings.

  The taxi was floating away from the ledge, and the police had stopped firing. Naido muttered something and tried to pry open the metal between the passenger cabin and the pod.

  The soothing male Jindalar voice of the taxi pod said, ‘The police have ordered us to stop. I am sorry for the momentary inconvenience,’ and the vehicle came to a halt in mid-air after it had moved barely a few dozen metres.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Evie said.

  He grunted, flicked the controls on the rifle, and shot the panel. The loud bang of the impact was followed by a puff of smoke.

  Outside, the police craft was closing in.

  As the smoke evaporated, sucked by the air-conditioning, a charred hole appeared. Naido ripped the panel off and flicked a few switches inside.

  ‘Whatever you’re doing, hurry!’ Evie said, as the police craft stopped by the pod.

  Naido pulled out his terminal, tapped on it, and looked at the panel. ‘Just need to get the code in… 5642… and there we go!’

  Evie’s stomach turned as the craft dropped faster than a free-fall acceleration.

  ‘Sorry,’ Naido said, hands on his terminal as the descent slowed, and the craft started moving forward. ‘The steering’s tricky, but at least I’ve got control.’

  He had connected his device to the taxi pod’s systems, and was now flying, using his comms terminal to steer the craft.

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a hacker.’

  ‘It’s not the first time I’ve taken one of these,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘I’m impressed. How far’s the Megaplex?’

  ‘It’s about a quarter moon, but we ain’t home free yet. Look.’ Naido gestured upwards.

  A police craft closed in from above, and another one from between the buildings on the right, but the most concerning sight was the flash of blue lights straight ahead.

  ‘What now?’

  Naido cringed. ‘Let’s see what this baby can do, yeah?’

  Evie was about to say something when the taxi pod took a deep dive and her stomach turned, and just as she got to breathe out, they turned into a dark and tight alleyway between two massive obsidian buildings. ‘Whoa!’

  They streamed through the misty dark, far beyond the dazzle above, and Evie thought she could glimpse the surface of the moon.

  But two of the police craft were still behind them. Evie was sure they would catch up, and maybe shoot them down. ‘We can’t shake them!’

  ‘We could,’ Naido said, and made a ninety-degree turn, ‘if we got rid of the tracker in this thing.’

  ‘On it!’ She peered into the hole in the plating. As she had expected, inside were a number of panels, switches, wires of various colours, and units for specific purposes, but no indicators of what any of them did.

  ‘There’s no switch for it,’ Naido said, raising the little pod’s nose. ‘Damn—’

  With a loud bang, Evie was thrown against the inside of the door, Naido on top of her. The pod was spiralling downwards fast.

  ‘Hit the damned antenna— Ouch!’ Naido said, as Evie’s knee hit his crotch again.

  ‘I’m sorry. Whoa!’ Evie said, as the massive building outside twirled around faster and faster as they fell.

  Naido grabbed his handheld terminal from the floor. The pod was still spinning out of control, and now the ground was visible.

  ‘Turn it up!’ Evie shouted.

  ‘I’m trying!’

  The spinning subsided, but the ground was still coming towards them too fast. In a few seconds they’d be flat against it. And just then the nose of the craft lifted, and they soared upwards.

  Naido let out a sigh of relief and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Nice flying,’ Evie said.

  To disable the tracking system, she had to connect to the system. If Naido could do it, she could too, and in a moment, she was in—easy as stepping on a spider.

  The pod turned sharply again, making Evie lose her balance. The police craft were closing in. The loudspeakers relayed their message: ‘You have ignored our warning—we will fire.’

  Hunching o
ver her terminal, Evie found what she was looking for, and with a simple swipe, cut the connection between the tracking beacon and the navigation systems. ‘It’s off.’

  ‘Great, but we’ve lost navigation.’

  ‘Collateral damage. Can’t take out the beacon without disabling navigation, I’m afraid—not unless I rewire the whole system.’

  ‘I’ve a general sense of where we should go,’ Naido said, and turned swiftly. ‘But first we need to lose the trail. Grab hold of something!’

  Just as Evie got a grip of the handlebar on the door, the pod took a stomach-turning dive. Blue lightning shot from the police craft as it whizzed past close by.

  ‘They’re shooting at us!’ Evie said, as the shot spread like lightning on the building’s black wall.

  ‘Just like they said they would. Electric pulses, trying to disable this pod.’

  Evie found herself panting. ‘You can’t shake them.’

  ‘Watch me. We’re going to the old town.’

  ‘The old town?’ Evie had never heard of the old town, but when it appeared in front of them, she understood.

  A number of small buildings a maximum of ten to fifteen floors high were scattered under a roof made of interconnected obsidian buildings. And what a maze it was. ‘Oh, I see.’

  Naido winced and brought the pod down. People walked on the surface, unlike anywhere else in the city, where all the walkways were raised and covered. A police craft was close behind them but was unable to fire because of the civilians. Naido dived between two buildings and straight towards a third, the police right on their tail.

  Just before they hit the wall ahead, Naido took a quick left turn and steered the pod through the small gap between the buildings. The larger police craft couldn’t make it, tried to turn the other way, and ended up a few metres inside the building.

  ‘Whoa!’ Evie said. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘They’re up there, waiting for us to emerge.’ Naido pushed the ship down further, slowing its speed. ‘But we won’t emerge, not in the old town.’

  In front of them was a pedestrian tunnel with augmented walkways, and just enough space for the pod to fly through. Naido steered them in with precision.

  ‘You’re not a bad cabbie.’

  ‘Just takes a while to get used to this,’ he said, pointing at the comms device in his hands. ‘It’s maybe the worst controller I’ve used for flying.’

  Evie chuckled with a buoyant feeling of surviving the chase, regardless of what lay ahead. They streamed just by the roof of the tunnel, emerged at the end of it into a carnival of colourful lights.

  ‘That’s Megaplex.’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Henning found himself sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall in a quiet maintenance tunnel under the dock floor of the Spit City spaceport. Oily water dripped slowly into the pool opposite him, and from time to time, the corridor trembled with the muffled rumble of spaceships from above. After jumping out of the departing spaceship, he was able to slip down and find a place to hide for a moment. He couldn’t stay there for long, but he had to take a breather. Drawing on E to heal had its cost.

  The stump of his arm still throbbed hard, even if the sharpest edge of the pain had already passed. Now that the bleeding had stopped, he pried open the knot on the tourniquet. Once it loosened, he turned the deodoriser—the releasing squeeze eased the pain—and untied the knots holding it in place.

  Fortune favours the bold, he reminded himself. There was no second-guessing, no looking back; the die was cast, and he had become an outlaw. That didn’t matter now, for he had a higher purpose.

  He wondered what Aino would think of his actions, but eventually she would understand. He would find a way for them to get back to Avalon, but now the Ver and the Remola had to be stopped, and he couldn’t do it sitting on his hands in Dawn Central, even if it was the safest place for Aino to be.

  Now he had to find Sofia and Evie. He would sneak out of the spaceport and go to the building where they said the Noir was; that was his best lead.

  He stood up and started moving along the tunnel. The police were after him, and every camera in the city would be tooled to alert his presence to them. He couldn’t show his face.

  He stopped and kicked the soot on the ground; it was thick, black and oily—just what he needed. He dipped his index finger into the grime and drew a thick diagonal line across his face, and another, horizontally, on one cheek. He had no mirror to check his artwork, but that pattern was the easiest one to fool the face recognition algorithms around the city. That, too, would only work for a while. He would still need to avoid the cameras.

  The tunnel ended in a staircase that merged with another tunnel, and at the end, a door marked ‘Exit.’

  He opened the door and entered a small room filled with what looked like control devices, and a stubby Andron man tending to one with a latch open. The man glanced at Henning, his gaze lingering on his pained face and arm. ‘You have ID?’

  ‘I was looking for the toilet. Which way is the terminal?’

  ‘Stupid tourists,’ he muttered, and pointed at the door on the other side of the room. ‘Take the second staircase all the way up, and you’ll find yourself in the terminal. Then, follow the signs! You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘So sorry, sir. Thank you so much, sir,’ Henning said, and stepped past the man. He proceeded through a tall corridor, and just as the man had said, found two sets of stairs going up. He took the second. After a short climb, maybe four floors, the staircase ended at an ordinary door. Henning pushed it open and was greeted with the cacophony of the upper terminal floor shopping area.

  There was the hard-blasting music from a Jindalar clothing shop, and a big group of giggling Jindalar girls. A family of five blue Baar zipped past on hover-boards, the youngest almost bumping into him. The corridor was full of tourists, businessmen, families, men and women, people of all shapes and sizes. Some streamed past on motorised shoes, while others ambled in leisure as their robot servants followed behind.

  Henning checked the overhead signs and found the one he was looking for: the magnarail station. Following the signs, he hurried past the crowds, and after ten minutes or so, found himself at the station.

  He stared at the gate to the trains, wondering how to get past.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Before him towered a tall hooded woman with a long scar across her face just like the line he had drawn on his. ‘Henning Dal?’

  He took a step back. ‘Why?’

  She removed her hood and let her red hair flow out. ‘I’m with Sofia Kvantström.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  The woman pointed over the crowd. Henning’s eyes caught Sofia waving at him by a baby stroller advertisement.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘She’s bugged by Belinda Killock—I trust you know who I’m talking about.’

  ‘What do you mean, bugged?’

  ‘She’s got nanobots. Killock can monitor her, what she sees, hears, feels, tastes…’

  She continued, but Henning was unable to hear her. He understood exactly what she meant. Belinda had used nanobots before without consent—on Jill and Eddie—but he never thought she’d do it with Sofia. How could he have been so blind? ‘And who are you?’

  ‘A friend,’ she said. ‘You can go to her. I wanted to let you know first.’

  ‘Thank you. I really appreciate it, Ms…?’

  ‘Wolfe. She says you know more about the Ver than most people. We need help to keep them at bay. I noticed light repels them—’

  ‘Correct,’ Henning said. ‘But it won’t stop them.’

  Reina told him about Evie, and the Starbearer chip she carried. They had split up to keep Belinda and the navy from tracking her. Reina said they were headed for the Megaplex. Henning could help them fight the Ver, using E like he had done in the hotel, but the situation with Sofia troubled him. If the navy was in control of her, they would already know whe
re he was. He had to get the nanobots offline, but had no means of doing it without accessing the systems that controlled them. Perhaps Jill could do it, if he could just reach her.

  ‘I’ll take you to her,’ she said, ‘but before you speak with her, you should have a clear plan of what you want to say that the navy can hear.’

  ‘For sure,’ Henning said, though he realised he couldn’t talk with Sofia about anything substantial, and if the navy was tracking her, he wouldn’t have much time.

  ‘Of course, you could also talk to them as a way of leading them astray. Sofia would understand.’

  Henning appreciated the advice. Being with Sofia was difficult as long as she was monitored, but just as he thought about it, he had an idea that could work. Still, he wondered, ‘Why do you do this?’

  ‘I’ve been around, and I’ve seen things. This Ver infestation is just the beginning. If we fail, if Evie and August fail, it will be disastrous. So, why do I do this? I do it because there’s no other option. My client’s greater cause.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘You don’t do this just for yourself, either.’

  ‘No,’ Henning said. ‘I do this for the future, one without creatures of the netherworld.’

  ‘Amen to that.’

  On their way towards Sofia, Henning stopped. ‘Wait. There’s someone in the navy who could maybe help us. I’ve lost my comms device—I wonder if you could send them a message.’

  ‘I could send an anonymous text, but there’s no guarantee they will open it, even if I used Ghostnet priority protocol.’

  ‘Please, it’s worth the shot. She’s Jill Faith, she could have the access to turn it off, and would have the will. I believe she’s part of the core command in Dawn Central.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ she said, and tapped on her comms device.

  Henning glanced around, checking for the navy or the local police. If Belinda and the navy were monitoring her right then, they could pinpoint his location and catch him.

  ‘Sent,’ Reina said. ‘I’ll let you know if she acts on it.’