‘That’s the biggest problem of the place,’ Eddie said, and looked down with a tight-lipped smile. Tredd understood – Star Bar was a gambling heaven, and Eddie had some interesting memories from the casinos. He bit into the muffin. It was still warm inside, fruits mixed with bits of chocolate, the taste surprisingly sweet.
‘You lost me…’ Bells said, and shook her head. ‘But isn’t Five Ways also in the Vegasos system?’
‘Never mind,’ Eddie said. ‘Star Bar is just one of the spokes of Five Ways space station.’
Berossus lifted his head up and set his food aside. ‘It would be great, if we could at least drop Bells to my mother. Maybe I could then join you in Yedda.’
Tredd shrugged. They were going to waste a day, but it was better than nothing. He put down the muffin; it was too sweet. ‘All right. Any risks?’
‘Negligible.’ Eddie pushed his glasses up his nose and adjusted the hinge on his ear. ‘The computer gives the pinch a risk of failure of about hundredth of a percentage. I think we can live with that, and their station should be decently equipped to diagnose and fix our energy stores. I would recommend staying away from the casinos though.’
‘What does the risk mean?’ Bells rapped the table with her fingers.
‘You see,’ Eddie said, ‘the pinch engines apply force to natural spots in the curved space to bring seemingly distant places together. If the pinch cannot be sustained when you’re going through – for example because of an engine breakdown or trying to pinch more than you can – you could end up in a completely different place.’
‘You must have heard stories of ships disappearing completely,’ Tredd said.
The smile had certainly disappeared from Bells’s face; the lines around her mouth disappeared only to reappear on her forehead. Her fingers tapped the table.
‘They’ve not really disappeared,’ Eddie said, drawing invisible quotes in the air with his fingers. ‘They’ve just been thrown very far into uncharted space.’
‘But to any observer it’s the same as if they’d disappeared.’ Evie made a vanishing gesture with her hands in the air. ‘And as for the people inside, they have no way to communicate or travel back. In Momentum 6 you have to re-spawn.’
‘Is that supposed to help?’ Bells asked.
Eddie shrugged. ‘It’s a part of faster-than-light travel… but as I said, the risk is almost non-existent.’
‘Why are we in such a hurry anyway?’ Evie asked, leaning back.
‘It’s the gig.’ Tredd leaned forward, his elbows on the table. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t yet had the chance to brief you. I wanted to wait for Eddie, and now that we are all here…’
Evie straightened up, Berossus leaned forward, and Bells pulled her chair closer. Tredd had their attention.
‘You might know I’m a bounty hunter,’ he said, feeling somewhat uncomfortable having to lie about the mission, trying to remember all the lines and if the story held. ‘Now, a company I sometimes work for asked me to pick up a shipment of some precious mud from the planet Un in the Yedda system, to bring it to them in Spit City.’
Evie grinned. ‘What does the mud do?’
Everyone laughed, even Eddie gave dry chuckle, and Tredd found himself sniggering.
‘Well, it’s not really a bounty hunter job, is it? My guess is they wanted someone with military experience—’
‘Before you ask,’ Eddie cut in, ‘he was a captain in the navy, but I doubt he wants to talk about it.’
Tredd didn’t. Instead, he took a deep breath and continued, ‘Un lies in the fringes of an area with frequent social unrest. With the strength of Dawn Alliance peace-keeping prowess, I doubt there’s much in terms of action, but don’t expect this to be a holiday cruise.’
The laughter gone, Evie grabbed the side of the table, and Berossus nodded thoughtfully.
‘You asked about why we must hurry,’ Tredd said, turning to Evie. ‘The client demand for the stuff is soaring and my employer’s stock is almost gone. The season in Un’s mud area is just about to change, rendering it impossible to extract more mud for at least a year.’
‘What is this mud anyway?’ Evie asked.
Tredd swallowed. He should have read more about the mud to explain it. He glanced at Eddie, seeking help, but got none. ‘Well—’
‘Un-mud,’ Bells said, unwittingly saving Tredd, ‘is a natural mineral compound, rich in subdemun, which makes it beneficial for regenerative skincare. It’s a Baar thing; their blue skin gains significant tone and radiance from the mud.’
‘Cosmetics… Interesting,’ Evie said, and looked across the galley. ‘Funny we’re just human, Andron and Jindalar on this ship.’
‘Just doing our job,’ Tredd said, and shrugged. That was easy, he thought. Bells did a great job explaining the mud.
There were no other questions about the mission, as the discussion diverted to skincare. Tredd was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned the words ‘star’ and ‘crash’ in the same sentence. Eddie, who of course was in the know, stayed a quiet observer.
AFTER THE BRIEFING, everyone started to settle in to get some sleep. Tredd, however, sat in the cockpit, staring at the stars on screen, and sipping Kikuchian spirits. It had almost turned into a habit.
He had wanted to go straight to Yedda, find and pick up the device, and then return via Five Ways to collect his reward. Reality wasn’t always so simple – especially when interstellar space travel was involved. He seemed to have been lucky with his crew though. He trusted Eddie, and was delighted to have him on board. The mechanic was a bit slow, but apparently knew his job. The doctor on the other hand was something else. Probably there was something going on between her and Berossus. The story about taking her to help his mother was too heart-warming to be true, but Tredd didn’t want to pry into their private matters. For him the doctor was a passenger, and a harmless one at that. Then there was Miss Smarty-Pants, Evie. Tredd couldn’t make his mind up about her. She seemed to know her stuff, even if she had learnt it from a virtual reality game. There was something about her he could not place, and it bothered him.
The screen blinked a note about an incoming video transmission. It was FIST. Tredd straightened up, placed his drink on the side, and accepted the call.
The screen showed the pencil-neck in front of a wall patterned with a stylised version of the FIST logo. ‘Mr Bounty, we trust all is well with you.’
Tredd had hoped he would never have to see this guy again. ‘What happened to Hugo?’
‘He has many assignments, as do I. So let me get straight down to business,’ the pencil-neck said with a self-righteous raise of his chin. ‘We can see from your ship’s log that you are planning to take your crew to Vegasos. Our intelligence reports heavy presence of navy battle cruisers around the vicinity of all major space stations around the area. We would advise you to reroute.’
So, these guys are following every single move I make, Tredd thought. ‘Well, that’s too bad,’ he said. ‘Do you realise that the ship you gave me won’t even pinch to Yedda?’
‘It should,’ the pencil-neck said without showing any emotion.
Tredd leaned his head to the right and pursed his lips. ‘But it doesn’t.’
There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other.
‘Fine, but you must keep a low profile. The day when the device can be activated is at hand, so get to Yedda as quickly as possible. Vegasos is an unnecessary distraction.’
‘You should have given me a proper ship and I’d be in Yedda tomorrow morning,’ Tredd snapped. When the pencil-neck showed no reaction to his words, he added, ‘When I get to Yedda, how do you suppose I’m going to find the device? I don’t even know what I’m looking for.’
The pencil-neck nodded like an android – perhaps he was one? ‘You must find your old friend, Tommy Huckey. As soon as you arrive, run a broad scan of the ships in the system and see if he’s in flight – if he’s not, you need to scan the planets one by one—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ Tredd said waving his hand in front of the screen, ‘but what if the device isn’t with him?’
The pencil-neck shrugged, and it almost made him seem human. ‘Find him, and find out. He’s the only connection we have to the device. We will let you know if we gain more intelligence, but as you know, once you make the quantum pinch, you can only receive messages with compromised delivery times.’
‘So they might or might not get to me?’
‘The Rutger is a cargo ship; it does not have a presence room capability for virtual meetings. However, I want to emphasise the importance of your mission. In the wrong hands, the device could cause catastrophic consequences. Bring it to safety. That’s all for now.’
The call was cut from the other end and the screens went black. Tredd leaned back on the squeaky leather seat, and turned to the soothing vision of the black infinity dotted by stars and glossed by alcohol.
INTERLUDE
ALMOST TWENTY YEARS AGO, IN INITIA, DANDELIA, EURA
In early morning hours the sky was clear with the twin moon crescents like two Cs in the sky, with a background of an infinite number of stars woven like a blanket of glitter.
‘See, it is as simple as that,’ Tommy whispered as the little device he pushed against the doorframe clicked, and the door slid open.
Tristram snuck in after Tommy and their nerdy friend, Eddie. The garage was quiet.
Six years had passed since Tristram and Tommy had raced each other in the Pit. After they had beaten the hell out of each other at the schoolyard, and spent a full day at detention mending their wounds, they had become the most unlikely friends. Both shared a love of hover-bike racing and had been certain they would make it big someday. However, now their interest was turning to other things.
What happens in the minds of teenagers is the strangest thing, but these boys were on a roll of stealing valuable crafts from the garages in the wealthy suburbs. They had a contact, Naido, to whom they delivered the ‘goods’ and who paid them an acquisition fee through an organisation that made it look completely legal in the digital money systems. Tristram had no idea how it worked, but he knew the value of money, and compared to anything else this work paid tenfold. They would get rich.
The boys sneaked into the garage. Tristram stopped to eye a little pod – a standard video surveillance system.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Eddie said, ‘the Survo210 series is disabled by the wireless infiltrator.’ He fiddled with a small screen, reviewing the settings of the underground software he could tweak to disable almost any known surveillance system.
‘I trust you, but I still feel uneasy in front of the cameras.’
Eddie shrugged. He was a small and skinny guy – the complete opposite to buff Tristram and Tommy – with eyes behind his small glasses looking in completely different directions, so that you never knew if he was looking at you or the guy right beside you. But what he lacked in physical strength, he made up for with brains. He was the perfect partner for guns-blazing Tristram and gung-ho Tommy, and perhaps for that reason, no one dared to cross the line with him.
Tommy shone the torch of his wrist terminal over the crafts resting in the garage. ‘Holy propulsion! This place is awesome. Look at that, it’s a Bullet Executive, isn’t it?’ The garage was more like a hangar, filled with dozens of crafts of various shapes and sizes, all shiny, without a speck of dust on them, and all very rare models. ‘Who owns all of this?’
‘Focus, guys,’ Tristram said. ‘We are looking for a very rare piece – a three-hundred-year-old collector’s item – the Petals Interceptor S. Can you see it?’
Of course they could. It sat in the furthest corner, shining like silver under the bright LED lighting. Curvaceous body, like a work of art… or a girl… no, like the body of a woman, like Jill was now, Tristram thought. Jill was not a girl anymore; she was all grown up. The unfortunate thing was that she was going to a different school, and they did not meet as often as he would have liked. Sometimes she came around to hang out with old friends, or to see Tristram race, even if his performance was on a downward slope. Jill had no idea about the gigs Tristram pulled at night with his boys. The secrecy pained Tristram, but she couldn’t find out. That would be the worst thing that could happen. He did not want to lose her. She was the most beautiful thing in the universe.
Also beautiful was this piece of Crusterian engineering. Petals had produced only a limited line of Interceptors with the S-specification, signified with the glorious golden rims around the turbines. It was a piece of art, and now it was going to be their pay cheque.
‘Snap out of it,’ Eddie said, and lifted up a finger. ‘Do you guys even know what this is worth?’
‘It must be millions.’ Tommy looked up at the craft with his mouth open.
‘Quite correct, 231 of them to be precise. That’s how much one was auctioned for three years ago – now it’s way more. Way, way more.’ Eddie looked like he was trying to calculate a value.
‘Think about if we sold it ourselves, the money we could make,’ Tommy said, shaking his head.
‘And how would we do that?’ Tristram said while sauntering towards the front of the craft. ‘Put an ad on the Dawn Net? For sale: Original Petals Interceptor S?’
‘Of course not,’ Tommy said, following Tristram. ‘I was just thinking, what if.’
Tristram stopped at the craft’s nose. ‘I don’t think it’s even possible to sell it on this planet. I’m guessing Naido ships them off to another planet without leaving a mark within the systems.’ Probably Naido was just another intermediary, just as Tristram and his friends were, but one small rung above them.
‘They will leave a mark, somewhere. It’s just not significant enough,’ Eddie corrected.
‘We need to talk with Naido,’ Tommy said. ‘But now we need to get this baby on the move. Eddie?’
‘Just a sec.’ Eddie pressed icons on the screen of his terminal, raised his head from the screen and looked up. ‘Gentlemen, introducing Petals Interceptor S.’
The hovercraft lit up with blue light and gave a hiss as it let out steam. The door rose up, and a platform extended down in front of the boys’ feet.
‘Nice. Well done,’ Tristram said, and punched Eddie on the shoulder.
‘Ouch,’ Eddie said, and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you have to do that?’
‘All right boys, we gotta go.’ Tommy started up the platform. ‘You drive, Tris.’
Tristram and Eddie hurried up steps behind Tommy, and entered the cockpit. Everything around them was silvery steel and padded caramel leather. Inside it was clean and uncluttered, like it had never been used. Tristram worried that it might have been unused for a while as sat down in the pilot’s leather chair. What if it doesn’t start? Tristram thought. He did not want to stay in the garage any longer than he absolutely had to.
‘The door,’ Tristram said.
‘Working on it,’ Eddie said, face down in his terminal screen. ‘Done.’
The heavy garage door rose up in front of them, revealing the clear starry skies.
‘I’m good as a pilot?’ Tristram asked. Normally the systems recognised the pilot though various biometrics – either via touch, visual, sound or a combination of them – so for him to be able to pilot the craft, it had to be hacked.
‘Wait,’ Eddie said, still fiddling with his terminal. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘What?’ Tristram asked. He was getting nervous. What if there was an anti-theft system that Eddie’s software couldn’t hack, or didn’t even know about?
Eddie looked up and down. ‘The controller’s not responding… wait… that should do it.’
Tommy leaned in. ‘All good now?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, here goes.’ Tristram pressed the start button with his index finger. This system was over three hundred years old, and used only fingerprints for security. Whoever was the rightful owner had just had Tristram’s fingerprints added right beside his – or he
r – set of fingerprint data. However, Naido’s people deleted all of the data once he got the craft. At least, Tristram hoped they did.
The motors ignited and settled to run with a smooth hum. Tristram activated the sleek head-up display and increased the anti-gravitational push.
‘Petals knew how to design this shit,’ Tommy said in awe, looking at the head-up display.
‘All good for exit?’ Tristram asked, turning to Eddie.
‘I’ve set the doors to close once we’re out of reach. We should leave no mark behind.’
‘I trust you,’ Tristram said, and powered the engines.
The Petals Interceptor S slid out of the garage like a belt from a silky nightgown. They darted up to the cool night, all giving silent sighs of relief.
Two days after their successful gig, Tristram woke up to sunshine beaming through his window. It was his birthday, but his happiness was shadowed by a memory of the night before.
After a few games in the arcade with a bunch of friends, he and Jill had ended up sitting alone on a park bench, watching the sun set below the colourful Initia skyline, while the River Giula gently ran past.
Everything had been perfect. She had inched close and Tristram had run his hand over her bare shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin. She had turned to face him, smiling, her eyes dreamy. This was his chance.
He swallowed. She looked so beautiful, like a real woman. Tristram felt like he was just a boy. But Jill was there with him, no one else. He leaned forward, and closed his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jill suddenly said, pushing Tristram back. Then she stood up from the bench. ‘I can’t. I think I should go home.’
They had spoken very little afterwards. Instead, Tristram had done a lot of thinking. Was it because I’m inexperienced? Was it because I’m not winning anymore? Was it because she had found out what I’m doing with Eddie and Tommy? Was it because she didn’t love me? Are we ever going to be together? Is this the end?
The questions came back to haunt him on this sunny birthday morning. He put on blue sport shorts and a yellow T-shirt with a Force-craft logo, and went downstairs for some breakfast.
Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1) Page 8