Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1)

by Rock Forsberg

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again.’ Tredd stretched out his hand, and Gus grabbed it. They locked eyes.

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ Gus said.

  ‘Thanks for an open chequebook,’ Tredd said, and stepped out to the corridor smiling.

  He walked past the brightly lit shop front, where a perky shop assistant in a tight green Shuttler-shop branded uniform greeted him from between two standard white shuttles. The brightness of it all hurt Tredd’s head. He dismissed her and stepped into the elevator that was going to take him down to an ancient magnarail station for a cheap ride home.

  SHADY RAIN POURED down outside Tredd’s stained window. A few days had passed since Tredd had delivered Daler to FIST, and since then he had been mostly lounging in his apartment, drinking, scouring the Dawn Network, and pondering his life while letting it slip right between his fingers. The headache from the time-lapse still lingered in the back of his head. It was like a hangover that lasted for days, and to which there was no cure. Alcohol made it better for a while. A medibot had diagnosed his lower back pain as a strain, and offered painkillers. They worked wonders, and he should have started to exercise his back by now, but he felt stiff and out of steam.

  Tredd’s apartment was on the lower levels, and from his two small windows he could mostly see the opposite building. If he put his head right beside one corner, he could see another one. This was not exactly what he planned for himself.

  As a child, he had wanted to become a professional hover-bike racer. He had started riding a modified bike, which he called Rover, when he was just five. Racing in the Pit, a muddy piece of land between the native trees of Southern Dandelia on the outskirts of Initia, he had dreamed of fantastic tracks in Five Ways, New America, Darnison, and Shin-Chuong, all which he had planned visiting as a professional. He had dreamed of marrying Jill, the most beautiful girl he knew, and living with a family of four blonde, curly-haired children, near a peaceful sea on Eura, or perhaps on another planet with even more beautiful a star, two moons and halcyon skies.

  He had never planned his current pitiful existence, but as life turned out for so many people, plans were not the same as reality. The past was gone, and thinking about it made him only feel nostalgia for the green and clear seas of Eura, his home. Once it was the secret place he could take his mind to in a time of trouble, but now it only served to depress him.

  Delivering Daler didn’t help much. After the deductions, the net bounty had only covered the Perisher and a few unpaid bills. Nothing remained for him to save and soon he would need another gig.

  Tredd realised the mission did have some positive outcomes. He got out without a scratch – well, there was the strain – and he had delivered. He had removed a piece of harmful blast-scatter from the city, settling a long due debt with the Tait brothers.

  He remembered all too well the bunkers of Runcor, back in the days of Taits’ power. Usher Tait, the eldest of three brothers, had offered a gig to a number of tough guns for hire. It had been a typical briefing until an Andron bounty hunter with a full skeletal upgrade had recognised Tredd. Putting the finger on him, the Andron had broken the news on how Tredd, as a Dawn Alliance Navy officer, had helped uncover people who wanted to stay hidden – including one of the Taits’ weapons suppliers. Regarded as a two-faced vermin, Tredd had been lucky to get out of Runcor alive.

  After the incident in Runcor, the Taits had made sure everyone knew of Tredd’s work in the navy, destroying the little reputation he had been building for himself. Since then, two of the brothers had been blown up in space in a skirmish with a rival group, and Daler Tait had regressed to being a small-time criminal in Spit City. At the same time, Tredd had been slowly rebuilding his reputation with carefully selected clientele such as FIST. Now the circle had come to a close: the last of the Tait brothers was put away. FIST never specified why they wanted Daler, but one thing was for sure: he was not going to see light of day for a long time.

  While getting rid of Daler had brought him joy, the gig didn’t push him closer to getting out of Spit City. Quite the opposite. Unless he found a real way of making money, this city would be the end of him. His failure in the navy had left him outside the Dawn Alliance welfare network. He had no pension to look forward to, but rather a high-interest debt to cover the costs of the debacle. It took over three quarters of his income, and would take more than a hundred years to pay back – and that was when he was doing well. He did not want to think about it.

  Tredd poured another glass of brown Kikuchian spirit in his empty tumbler and took a sip. The comforting burn traced down his gullet, and he let out a long sigh.

  He looked around. This is what I’ve gotten to, he thought, alone in the lower levels of Spit City. In this tiny bunker of an apartment. With no way up and no way out. Only death. I’m stuck in this bloody hell as long as I live.

  Bounty hunting was a tedious job. You had to be street smart and know what was happening around you – including the latest tech developments – because the guy you were up against could be anyone, with anything. There were enhanced brains, muscles, eyes and ears, titanium body parts, brain extenders, finger-embedded knives and guns, life extensions, brain carriers, wheels and wings – if you could imagine it, someone already had it. No matter what you did, you could never prepare for everything. The entropy of development had just galloped away, and you had to rely on a few good strategies that worked for you. For Tredd it was the time-lapse, and there was no way he was going to risk it with a body mod.

  Without the time-lapse he would have been dead. It was worth dozens of lives. He could race anything that moved, shoot hostile people and monsters, fight in hand-to-hand combat, and lead troops to battle – he had been a goddamn captain of a battle cruiser. Had been.

  While the time-lapse provided him with an inhuman capability, it also took a price. Every time he used it, he swore it would be the last time. There was the headache, but that was not it. It was the dread. The infinite blackness that sucked out his life force and left him empty, like an abandoned fuel cell. It pulled him down to a deep dark well of depression, and at the bottom he faced the glowing yellow eyes that saw right through him. There were always the eyes, and they pulled him in. They were in his dreams, but also those wakeful moments when the dark slipped into his consciousness. They always followed a time-lapse.

  Time-lapse was his blessing and it was his curse; it was part of who he was, and it had everything to do with his present situation.

  What is a suspended, heart-broken, and delusional ex-military man good for anyway? Tredd thought and emptied his glass with a one big gulp. He eased down on his couch and closed his eyes. Within minutes, he drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TREDD WOKE up to an annoying electric chime.

  The hot-screen on his wall was telling him about an incoming video call. Who calls me at this hour, and on video? he thought, but answered without the video, just to stop the sound.

  It was FIST. Their red and black logo came on the screen: a highly stylised graphic of a fist, made out of five rectangles representing fingers, with a circle around it. In your face! it seemed to shout – even without the upwards middle finger the mockers drew on it. The logo spun around and revealed a young man dressed in the standard red and black FIST uniform. Tredd had never seen the guy before. He had short black hair, combed to the sides with a parting that was sharp as a blade. In contrast to his looks, his eyes looked around as if at a loss, and he coughed to clear his throat.

  ‘Tristram Boxley, we assume you can hear and see us.’

  Tredd hadn’t heard that name for a long time. He waited for a while, letting the boy on the screen clear his throat before he responded. ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘Good,’ the boy said, unable to hide his relief. ‘I am here to inform you that you have been summoned to a mission briefing at the FIST headquarters tomorrow at ten hundred hours.’ The boy held his breath as he waited.

&nbs
p; ‘OK, tell me, what is it about?’

  ‘The matter is confidential, and will be explained to you upon arrival. Please note that a failure to comply with a summoning is a criminal offence with a minimum fine of one thousand teradollars. Do you have any questions?’

  ‘No,’ Tredd said, and leaned back in this chair, hands behind the back of his head. He did have questions, a whole lot of them, but it was clear that this fellow knew nothing. He was only a young messenger. Tredd wanted to tell them to piss off, but he refrained. You didn’t bite the hand that fed you, however annoying they became.

  ‘Goodbye,’ the boy said, and his face gave way to the FIST logo. After a few seconds, that too disappeared to the standard stand-by wall pattern.

  Tredd rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t sure for a while if what he had seen on the screen was real or just a fantasy. He had never been summoned, and while his first thought was that he was going to court – perhaps because of the dozens of occasions he had broken law or property while on their missions – he realised the boy had said it was about a mission briefing.

  Normally FIST just posted their jobs on the Dawn Network. This was something different. Tredd hoped there was money in the end. Being a non-citizen, he needed it desperately.

  FIST was a like a force of nature. Nobody seemed to know how it had come about or who actually controlled it. All knowledge was hidden behind a tightly controlled organisational structure with multiple layers of clearance. The highest level Tredd had ever talked to was six, and he had never heard of anyone at level three or above. While Tredd was a free agent, as long as he operated in Spit City he was chained to FIST. Any other jobs were few and far between, and seldom offered a feasible risk-to-reward ratio. He could have applied to work for FIST, to enjoy a steady income with prospects of upward mobility, but after the navy exiled him he never wanted to join a large organisation again.

  THE NEXT MORNING, after another night of medicine-induced dreamless sleep, Tredd pulled his shuttle up to the side of the Pentafol building somewhere around the 160th floor – the main entrance to the FIST headquarters.

  He was led up through vile brown-and-black-patterned corridors to a room where three men in standard red and black FIST uniforms sat behind an angular desk. If FIST acted at all in their usual way, they were not going to introduce themselves. The room was spacious, and had little in terms of decor, except the curvy pattern on the wall, which seemed to accentuate the table.

  ‘Mr Boxley, please sit down,’ said the oldest of the three, gesturing towards a small, uncomfortable-looking chair in front of them. Tredd assumed the man was the oldest as his hair was grey and his face had heavy lines. He looked upright, like a soldier who was used to giving orders standing, not sitting down. He was clearly the boss.

  Tredd sat down on the hard chair, its metal feet giving away a creak.

  ‘My name is Sarthon Exxoc,’ the boss said with an austere expression. ‘I run the interstellar operations.’

  Wow, an introduction… That was grand, and with a Head of Interstellar Ops? Tredd thought. The man must have been the highest-ranking FIST officer he had ever come across – a least level three.

  ‘And this here is Lincoln Lyford.’ Sarthon Exxoc gestured towards the skinny man on his left. In contrast to his boss, this junior looked like he had not been anywhere else than behind a desk and would fall down if you handed him an assault rifle. ‘He’s from Finance.’

  Figures, Tredd thought, as the finance guy nodded with a face of a serious child.

  ‘And here,’ Mr Exxoc said, gesturing towards the bearded man on his right, ‘is Hugo Rembon from Mobilisation.’

  Hugo flashed a smile and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. Size-wise, he went right in between his boss and the junior. His suit fitted him perfectly, especially when compared to the pencil-neck’s jacket, which was a size too large, and the creases on their superior’s lapel. A relaxed gaze above his triangular nose made him appear the most approachable of the three.

  ‘Well, I guess you know me already,’ Tredd said, and lifted his right leg to his left knee.

  ‘That’s right, we know all about you Mr Boxley,’ the pencil-neck from Finance started, and as he did Tredd knew he was not going to become friends with the man – while he appeared soft, his snarly voice betrayed his intentions. ‘And it is only fair for us to tell a little about ourselves. We acknowledge the services you have performed over the past few years, and assume you recognise our role as the servants of the public of Spit City.’

  Tredd nodded, wondering where this was going.

  ‘But that is not all… As you might know, we provide a broad range of banking, insurance, health, and protection services to our private and business clients. With our vast resources, we are positioned—’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Tredd raised his hand. ‘You didn’t bring me here to talk about my finances? If you want to sell me something, you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘Your finances,’ the bearded mobilisation man, Hugo, said, and chuckled. Tredd couldn’t figure out if he was his senior or junior – you never knew the age of a man with a full beard with a reddish tinge, did you? The man continued, ‘We know all about your finances – and trust us, there would be over a hundred million inhabitants our system would pick as more prospective clients before it picked you. We know all about your situation.’

  Tredd raised his eyebrows. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well,’ Lincoln the pencil-neck started, ‘where do we begin… You started off as a juvenile criminal, were deported from your homeland and sent to an intergalactic assault force of the Dawn Alliance Navy, made up of fellows just like you, where you somehow managed to get into a position of a captain. Getting comfortable, you tried to play them, and it was only a matter of time before your leadership found out what you were up to and dismissed you. Now you scrape whatever missions come your way, but without a team you can count on, risking your life to pay back your debts, on a steep downhill slope to—’

  ‘You brought me here for this?’ Tredd stood up. ‘I’m leaving!’

  ‘Look at you – you have seen thirty-five years, look like fifty, and act like fifteen,’ Hugo said with open arms. ‘The last time you brought us a man without a leg.’

  Tredd wanted to object. Daler had a leg when he brought him in. Whatever happened afterwards was out of his hands. Before he could say anything, the Sarthon Exxoc raised his thick arm. ‘Enough. We brought you here because we want to offer you a job.’

  A job? Tredd felt confused. ‘Well, this has been a weird way of going about it – why don’t you just put it onto the Dawn Net like you normally do?’

  ‘This is job is different,’ Mr Exxoc said with a commanding voice. He sat tall between his minions, who were placid at his sides like a tiger and a dragon, waiting to be sprung upon command. ‘To complete the assignment, you must travel out of Spit City, and out of this solar system. There is a device we want you to find and deliver.’

  The mission is outside Spit City. Of course – Interstellar Ops was involved. Interstellar travel multiplied the risks involved, but the opportunity to get out – perhaps abandoning the mission and not returning – was quite intriguing.

  Tredd sat down. ‘What kind of device is it?’

  Mr Exxoc stared down at Tredd with a face of stone. ‘It is a weapon. Something that threatens the existence of everyone in Spit City.’ He paused – in perfect silence and stillness – and continued with a low voice, ‘but also the solar system, the galaxy… possibly the universe. ‘

  There was a moment of silence. Waiting for him to continue, Tredd traced the brown lines on the wall with his eyes. He found these antics very theatrical. ‘Well, isn’t that always the case?’

  Hugo from Mobilisation touched his collar, and Linc from Finance turned a paper in his hands, both eyeing their superior, seemingly unsure about what to say.

  ‘No,’ the boss said with a heavy sigh. ‘This is different, and you helped us uncover it.’


  ‘I did?’

  ‘In his brain, Daler Tait held information about the whereabouts of the device. That was the final piece of the puzzle we needed.’

  Hugo nodded with a close-lipped smile.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Linc grinned, showing his small yellow teeth. ‘What do you care?’

  ‘He’s in the hold,’ the boss said. ‘A brain in a box, if you know what I mean.’

  Tredd knew, but he was unsure if he should be happy or not. They had gotten Daler for some obscure reason, different to what Tredd had thought, and now they had him suffer as a head in a box. Would they do the same to me if I got on their wrong side? he thought, but brushed the thought away. Thinking like that will never get me out of Spit City.

  ‘So, about the device,’ he said. If he was to find it, he needed to know. ‘What exactly is it?’

  ‘It is now confirmed from multiple sources that the device in question is able to rapidly reverse the expansion of the universe – causing the stars to start crashing into each other, bringing about the next Big Bang. We call it the Starcrasher.’

  ‘But what does it is look like?’ Tredd asked, eying the thin row of bright LEDs that made a circle of light on the ceiling, like it was a weapon that could concentrate energy to move stars. ‘I guess it’s not a gun, or is it?’

  ‘Unfortunately the shape or the composition of the device is still unknown to us. What we do know is that for some reason the device cannot be activated yet. Our highest probability scenario is that it is still being prepared and safeguarded by someone waiting to unleash its powers.’

  ‘Who do you think would want to crash the universe?’

  ‘We don’t know – perhaps the New Existentialists want to deliver the big rip, or the Kisha Clan intend to use it as a threat to rise up to the Dawn Alliance. With the information we have it is impossible—’

  ‘What do you want of it?’

  The boss took a deep breath. ‘We want to get rid it. A device like that should not be allowed exist. However, it would be unwise to blast it away. Before we render it harmless, we want to understand how it was made, track its origin, and make sure similar devices will not be created. Destroying one would just bring about another. You must bring it back for research.’