The blonde looked at Tredd with dismay. ‘I’m a soldier, this is what I was trained for. I’m different from you criminal lowlife scum…’ They started moving again. ‘What got you here then?’
‘Stealing crafts.’
The blonde guy laughed. ‘They must be desperate… but you look like a man of action. I like it. The navy likes it. Make it today, and you’ll make it tomorrow.’
Dismissing the blonde’s comments as memorised navy slogans, Tredd looked back at the bombers, their backs against him, still working on setting up the plasma-bombs on their separate corners.
‘Damn it!’ the blonde shouted. ‘What’s taking so long with the bombs?’
‘All done here,’ one bomber said, and held the detonator up in his palm. ‘Ready to go whenever.’
‘Connecting!’ shouted the other.
While the other bomber was still establishing the wireless connection to make both bombs explode at exactly the same time, they heard an electric bell. The light came up on one of the elevator doors. Muscles tensed around the rifles.
The elevator door opened, revealing two masked rebel soldiers, both of them pointing pistols at the group.
Tredd took a sharp breath as the rebels fired.
Everything around him slowed down, almost to a standstill.
He had entered a time-lapse, even if he didn’t have the name for it then. It was the first time he had experienced it.
It lasted only a few blurry seconds. A blast from a rebel gun was flying directly towards him in mid-air. It barely moved in time-lapse, but in his shock Tredd reacted to it by jumping to the left, and shooting back at the rebels. He fell on the floor on his side, and just as he felt the pain of impact on his hip, everything around him started moving again.
He was out of the time-lapse.
Shots flew and rapped the walls. Someone screamed, something splatted and something thumped.
Tredd rose and saw the aftermath: both rebels were dead from Tredd’s fire, their guts blasted inside the elevator. The blonde was shot in the head, and the other bomber was screaming in agony as the right side of his stomach had exploded.
It was a pandemonium of blood and gore, but Tredd didn’t feel anything. He felt like a neutral observer, not judging, only experiencing. Perhaps he relived it fully in his dreams. Perhaps when it had happened for real, the shock of it all had made him numb. He wasn’t sure anymore.
The unhurt bomber finished what he was doing and came up to the carnage. Seeing what had happened, he turned around and threw his breakfast up on the floor.
‘Help me,’ pleaded the hurt bomber, spitting blood. ‘Please. Take me home. My mother…’
He was not going to make it; he was in pain, about to go to a shock, and was going to die in minutes. There was nothing they could do but stop the pain. He turned his rifle to point directly at the dying soldier’s face and, without any hesitation, pulled the trigger.
‘You shot him!’ the other bomber cried, and then he threw up again.
‘He was already dead,’ Tredd said. He had surprised himself by pulling the trigger without any emotion. Perhaps he was a man of action, as the blonde had said.
The dead bomber still held the detonator unit in his fist. While the rest of the world combined functions of various devices, the military kept it simple – a communicator for communicating, a detonator for detonating. Tredd knelt down by the dead bomber and pried open his clenched fist. He picked up the detonator. ‘Now let’s move!’
They raced to the door. Behind them more rebel forces were coming down, this time through the emergency staircase. Looking up across the street, Tredd glimpsed his troops signalling to him from the church tower. Tredd signalled back as he ran across the street and scrambled inside the church.
The rebels followed, and as soon as they came out to the street, they fell onto the Dawn Alliance fire. From up in the tower, the soldiers were shooting down at the rebels through broken stained-glass windows.
Tredd and the bomber met up with the three boys.
‘What happened, where are…?’
‘The bombs are set.’ Tredd shook his head and his assault rifle to herd the others. ‘We must go. The detonator is here. I’m gonna blast this up in five, and trust me, you don’t want to be here then.’
Nobody objected. They said nothing, just nodded and followed Tredd out of the building through the back door. They made their way a few blocks further away from the tower. No rebels saw them. They hid within an old archway.
Tredd detonated the bombs.
The explosion boomed between the streets and the ground trembled, first with the explosion, and then with the tower falling onto the surrounding buildings and down to the street.
Then came a thick cloud of dust.
For a moment, taking cover in the archway and breathing through a filter on his face, a feeling of exhilaration swept through him. He had shot both rebels in the elevator, and a boy, just like himself, in the face, and he had blown up a towering building to a pile of ash and rubble. He felt uncomfortable, almost ashamed, about what he had done, but then again, he had never felt so alive. He realised he was special. He could survive what had seemed like his doom, and he could even make it in the military. Down below the dusty archway in the middle of an urban war zone, he had reached a spiritual high, one he could never reach again.
After the dust settled, Tredd took lead of his newly found team and led them through the city. Two lost navy recruits joined with them on their way. They shot down some enemies, and they lost some of their own. Tredd got a flesh wound on his shoulder from a shootout on a street corner, but he was able to lead his team through the maze of buildings. Out by the edge of the city the enemy was defeated. A medical craft picked up Tredd, and soon he was chemically induced to sleep.
When he woke up, the medic told him that the building they had destroyed was the rebel headquarters, and that soon after the building fell, the rebels surrendered. Both sides had suffered great losses, and it was not until the Dawn Alliance’s armoured battalions followed the troops into the city that the tide of the battle was turned. Tredd was awarded a minor medal for his bravery.
Even though the navy appreciated his efforts, he didn’t get permission to go back home, not even for a visit. He was to serve for at least two years.
He tossed aside who he had been – the old Tristram could not make it in the armed forces. If he was to survive, he had to change. He built himself anew on what he had found on the battlefield: his ability to enter a time-lapse and skill of making shrewd decisions under stress.
He also changed his name. He became Tredd Bounty. Ironic as it turned out to be, at the time it was inspired by the hero of his favourite childhood show, Bounty, which followed a tough Spit City bounty hunter who always brought the bad guys to justice.
Little by little, he learnt more about the time-lapse. It happened by instinct when he realised a life-or-death situation was upon him, and his tour of duty provided dozens of instances of this. If he had not possessed the gift, he would have been killed time and time again. Most of his fellow soldiers lasted until their second mission, the lucky ones until their third, but they all got killed in the end. Tredd was the only one who survived, suicide mission after a suicide mission. Time-lapse was his secret and he was sure to keep it that way.
The first few time-lapses happened through circumstance. It was easy to spot the pattern: a sudden mortal danger always triggered it. Thinking about those moments, he could recall the overwhelming feeling of urgency and inevitability, and once he learnt to embrace that feeling, he learned to enter a time-lapse at will.
It was first just for a second or two, but little by little he was able to extend the time to closer to a minute. As he learnt to stretch the duration, he also had to work at releasing it at will. The first time he held a time-lapse for a minute, in his excitement he didn’t listen to his body, and suddenly felt sick, turning his insides out. He stumbled to the bathroom, threw up on the floor and fel
l face first in his own vomit, unconscious. When he woke up hours later, his body felt limp and his head throbbed like there were spikes inside.
He learnt to control and release the time-lapse, and optimise the time he had. Anything under thirty seconds was easy, anything more made him sick.
Even if he let go of the time-lapse in time to avoid the initial sickness, it always caught up with him within a few hours. Tredd figured that the time-lapse had to use something to power it, and the more often he used it, the more convinced he became that it was his own life force it drew upon – an evil idea. Getting out of the time-lapse he always felt drained, old and tired, his head throbbing. For hours afterwards, whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the staring eyes that peered deep into his soul. He could not sleep it away, because in his dreams the eyes followed, and pulled him down to a deep, sleepless darkness. He always thought he was going crazy, but eventually the feeling subsided and he regained his energy. The feeling was dreadful, but it was still better than death. Hence Tredd only entered time-lapse in life-or-death situations. Nothing else was worth the pain.
His survival did not go unnoticed. In one particular case he was brought in for questioning. He had been clearing a building of insurgents on a frontier planet. The insights unit had obtained the visual data captured by the cameras in the building, and had trouble comprehending what they saw – when shots were fired, Tredd had suddenly appeared metres away from where he had been, and there was no sensible way of explaining why it had happened. When Tredd insisted he knew nothing about it, the intelligence let go of the case and it was dubbed as a glitch in the surveillance system. Tredd, however, reminded himself to be more careful.
For the first two years Tredd fought to survive. In the process he became a professional soldier, fighting battles wherever the navy leadership cast him. He served on a number of ground combat missions, though none as difficult or memorable as the first one.
After being granted access to the public Dawn Network two years into his service, Tredd had first looked up his family, meaning his mother and sister – his gutless father had been dead to him since he had walked out on them. However, his mother and Fione were nowhere to be found. He tried everything, even the ID Administration Office. They told him his mother had put him on a blacklist. This meant he could not connect with them through the Dawn Network, nor see any data about them. With help from a colleague, Tredd learned that his mother had moved to rural Dandelia with another man. It was clear she didn’t want anything to do with her son. Tredd said goodbye – he too had a new life.
Tredd also looked up Jill. When he first found her, she was a student at Hirsch University, and later she was working as a psychologist. The last time he had a look, she had disappeared – no trace in the system – and the only explanation from the ID Administration Office was ‘an unexpected anomaly’ followed by a shrug.
Looking up his friends, he found Eddie serving in the navy as a pilot. Even though he had been the weakest of the bunch, he had survived. What were the chances?
Tommy, on the other hand, wasn’t linked with the navy at all. Digging into the data, he found Tommy had died almost immediately after they had been deported. Perhaps the poor chap didn’t make it through his first mission, Tredd had thought at the time. The truth about Tommy, however, surfaced only later when Tredd bumped into Eddie.
Clanker, the cantina of a navy supply station in a triple-star system light years from Eura, was a rugged spot of standard steel tables and stools, but with a difference that they served Kikuchian spirits for officers. The lights were down low for the evening, and the volume was up. Officers from various parts filled the Clanker, their voices loosened up by the liquors, the stools clanking on the floor and the metal cups on the tables. The fact that almost everyone was a visitor, just passing by, gave the place a relative anonymity that combined with the blanket of noise made it a perfect spot for a discreet discussion.
Tredd and Eddie filled each other’s glasses again and again as they talked. It had been a long time since he had been with someone who truly understood him. Tredd told Eddie his story – leaving out time-lapsing, of course – and Eddie did the same. While Tredd had thought it been bad for him, Eddie had had it even worse.
Eddie told him his story. ‘Same thing. One morning the Eura planetary police came to our house and took me away. I was lucky they didn’t make me a trooper. Instead, they put me to a testing programme, which drove some of the guys insane. They put me into this tight dark capsule, which moulded around me, pressed on me, and just barely let me breathe. The system used aural stimulation to give me problems to solve, and while my jaw couldn’t move, they picked up my responses and thought patterns straight out of my brain. If I had been claustrophobic, it would have wrecked me, and it almost did… Then there were the holographic rooms with full-on hyper-stimulation of sight, sound, touch and smell. I was pressing buttons, sliding levers, issuing commands, kicking pedals, avoiding bats, and what have you, all in order to keep the bomb from exploding and killing everyone. It was a simulation of course, but if the bomb exploded, the system shocked me with an electric current. The worse thing was, it always came at the end. The game was impossible to win… and I played it for hours – days – and at the end of one session I just fell flat on the floor.’
Tredd nodded, as the sweet smell of Jindalar mood fumes filled the air and the music took up a faster beat. They said mood fumes were happiness in the air, but Tredd had never felt it like that. To him the fumes were just mildly irritating. He preferred the traditional Kikuchian.
‘The next day I woke up in the infirmary, and they told me they would make me a fighter pilot. My small size and the versatility of my brain saved me from being a trooper,’ Eddie said with twisted lips. ‘They had me start on a Crescent, so it wasn’t too far from being a foot soldier.’
‘We still fly those rusty cans?’ Tredd said with disbelief. He had thought that model had been retired before he was born.
‘We still do, but only with new recruits. Now I’m flying a V2-Viper… it’s a bit different,’ he said with a nerdy grin.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Tredd said, feeling glad to see his old pal. ‘Seems like we turned out pretty well after all.’
‘Considering the circumstances. Who would have known that I’d be a fighter pilot?’
‘True that.’
‘But you… I think you already had this in you when we were kids, you know. Big, strong guy who always knew what to do, a racer with a good looking girlfriend—’
The thought of Jill made Tredd’s muscles tense. He realised Eddie must have noticed.
‘Sorry,’ Eddie said, ‘I didn’t mean to…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Tredd filled up their glasses with pure undiluted Kikuchian. ‘To be honest, since we were deported, I haven’t been in touch with home, Jill, Tommy…’
‘Thanks.’ Eddie pulled his glass closer, seemingly surprised. ‘So you don’t know?’
‘What?’
‘Man…’ Eddie said with a sigh, taking a sip of his drink. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’
Tension was building up within Tredd, and the combination of alcohol and mood fumes did him no favours. If anything bad had happened to Jill… Tredd was certain something had. He expected the worst. ‘Is she dead?’
‘Jill? No. Or… I don’t know. It’s about Tommy.’
Tredd relaxed, if only slightly. He picked up his tumbler and twirled it in his hands. ‘I thought all of us would be dead within months in the military. But I guess the outcome of two out of three is way better than the odds should have been.’
Eddie furrowed his furry brows. ‘No, that’s not it. Tommy’s alive, I believe, and it’s because of him that we’re here.’
I’m here because of Tommy? ‘What the…?’
‘It’s true,’ Eddie said. ‘When the police got to our homes, Tommy had already been in contact with them, and by the time we were deported he was enjoying his pay cheque. There was an intergal
actic bounty placed on a guy named Fernando Martinez de Los Angeles – aka Naido.’
Tredd was utterly astonished. He shook his head and took a big gulp. ‘Naido talked on us?’
‘No. It was Tommy who did all the talking – his charges were dropped and he got into a witness protection programme, new ID and all. Why? Because he squealed on us. Naido wouldn’t have gained anything by betraying us.’
Tredd only nodded, trying to understand what Eddie was saying, as he considered the implications. ‘How do you know about this?’
Eddie took a deep breath, and said, ‘It took some time until I had a secure route to hack the database, but when I did, I could find him through a trace of code they had mistakenly forgotten to erase. Right after our disappearance, Tommy – his last name is Huckey now – had gotten quite wealthy and left the planet. I tried to follow, but there were no reliable tracks after he left.’
‘The blasted meathead!’ Tredd hit the table, getting looks from the nearby tables. All this time Tredd had felt sorry for Tommy, thinking he was dead, the unfortunate one, when in fact the bastard had been the reason for his misfortune. Dark thoughts crept up in his mind. He waved away the onlookers and gulped the last of his drink with a scowl.
Eddie looked around and gulped his too.
Tredd wanted Tommy to know how he’d suffered, how he had made him suffer. There was no happiness in the air anymore. ‘I’d throw him into the sand of Dahlam…’
Eddie nodded. He stared down at the empty glasses, and filled both from a metallic pitcher.
They sat in silence, sipping their drinks, deep in thought. Tredd thought about what he would do to Tommy should they meet, and Eddie was probably doing the same. Realising Eddie truly was a network wizard, Tredd asked, ‘What about Jill – did you hack her data as well?’
Eddie took a moment and then shook his head. ‘There was nothing to hack.’
Tredd recalled seeing how her ID had mysteriously disappeared from the system not too long ago. ‘There must be something…’
‘Not even a byte.’
Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1) Page 19