Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  Emma took a new aim at Odachi. “Ensign, I’ve counted four bodies so far. Care to explain?”

  He winced and she wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or her question.

  “You think you’re the only one with secret orders?” His quiet voice filled the docking area.

  “Please,” May repeated. “You don’t want answers to these questions.” Her wound was still weeping blood and the drip drip drip of it on the floor was an urgent ticking of a clock.

  “Yes I do.” Emma was breathing fast, as if she’d just run kilometers instead of walking across an open room.

  Odachi stared at her with a steady, unblinking gaze as if he hadn’t noticed that half of his face had gotten seared. “Someone didn’t want to wait for whatever proof you could find. My orders were activated. When you went to help May pack, I relieved the guard you called, incapacitated Dauber, and rigged the lab to blow.”

  She stared between May and Odachi. He just admitted to killing Dauber. How could she stand by him so calmly?

  “I was told to destroy the AI, isolate May and keep her working. You weren’t supposed to be here. The blast at the door was supposed to take care of you.”

  “You should have killed me this time.”

  “She asked me not to.”

  “Give me one good reason not to kill you both.”

  “I can give you ten thousand,” Odachi said softly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Marast three. That’s how many civilians live on the colony there. Did you know I was born on Marast three?”

  “What are you talking about?” He was a Commonwealth soldier. It didn’t matter where the hell he was born. Besides, not every colony was on the side of the independence movement. And not all the indies supported the rebels. Officially Marast three was one of the neutral ones.

  May patted his arm. “Let me. It’s okay.” She limped towards Emma keeping her hands open in front of her. “The work we were doing.” She swallowed hard. “Chaz and I. We were tasked with creating a virus to disable an AI. We thought the threat of it would help end the war. Bring the Commonwealth and the rebels to the negotiating table. Stop this insane hemorrhage of lives and resources. We were so sure they wouldn’t risk deploying it.

  “We were wrong. Chaz found out they were planning to target civilian populations and blame the independence movement.” She trailed off and winced as if in pain. “It’s not just rebel ships. AIs control everything on the colonies, too, from basic life support to the power station to mine infrastructure.”

  Emma didn’t have to work too hard to imagine the catastrophic consequences. “Where’s your proof?”

  “Chaz hid it on Mnemosyne.”

  Which Odachi had blown up along with the scientist. “Convenient.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Emma didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  “Chaz had a temper. He threatened to go public on the net.” Dr. May smiled ruefully. “I think he knew he wouldn’t survive past the completion of our work, but he tried to shield me. Told them I didn’t know anything. That I hadn’t finished the error correction and testing.

  “We just hadn’t counted on them acting so quickly. Or ordering the destruction of the lab. We thought we’d have more time.” May’s breath caught in a sob. “I thought I’d have a chance to say goodbye.”

  “But you finished the program,” Emma said, barely breathing. “You transmitted it this morning.”

  “A crippled version. Along with the supposed anti-virus protection for Commonwealth-based AIs.”

  “Supposed?”

  “Yes. If they’re stupid enough to deploy it, it will not discriminate.”

  May stumbled and it took all of Emma’s self-control not to help her. The gun remained steady in her left hand, targeting Odachi.

  “And now what? You head off and contact the rebels? Sell them your services?”

  “No. I disappear. So no one can use me as a weapon anymore.”

  “Why did you choose him?” She gestured at Odachi. “He killed Dr. Dauber. Obliterated your proof. Assassinated Commonwealth soldiers. What makes you think he won’t kill you?”

  “He was supposed to. Once I completed the virus. And honestly? Oblivion would be a blessing. A lot of people are going to die because of the work Chaz and I did. But maybe, just maybe it will end the war.” May met Emma’s gaze with a direct stare. “I needed a pilot with two functioning arms. You were injured. I didn’t have a lot to choose from. As for Taro here, he signed his own fate with the blood of his fellows. We both have to live with the consequences of our choices.”

  May limped a little closer. Not close enough to be a threat, but close enough that she and Odachi presented two divergent targets.

  “And now you have a choice, Emmaline Gutierrez. You can kill us and this ends here. A lot of people on both sides of the war get hurt. Or you can let us vanish. Let me work to leave something other than mass death and destruction as my legacy.”

  Emma had no direct orders. At the very least, her superior officer was guilty of murder and dereliction of duty. He’d killed Dauber and nearly killed her under orders. But those orders were illegal by any interpretation of the rules of war.

  “Taro,” May said softly.

  Odachi nodded and lowered his weapon, leaving himself open and unguarded. She could kill them both in the span of a few heartbeats, report in, and be a war hero. Move up in the ranks. Maybe even end up an officer.

  A tiny sound startled her. Just a small scrape from the station side of the docking bay door. By the time she recognized it, the manual release had triggered and a wounded soldier lurched through, dragging his leg behind him.

  Before Emma could react, he fired his weapon. Odachi crumpled to the floor. The smell of cooking meat and burned polymer filled the room. May cried out and it broke Emma’s momentary stasis. In a smooth movement, she whirled and fired. The injured soldier’s eyes widened before he fell. A ten centimeter hole smoked in the center of his chest.

  Her hands shaking, Emma stepped over to where Odachi lay and pressed the hot barrel of her gun into his temple, growling incoherently. He didn’t move.

  “Emmaline.” May’s soft voice penetrated the buzzing in her ears. “Is this your choice?”

  “Can you do it?” Emma asked, not taking her gaze from Odachi.

  “Do what?”

  “End the war. Save civilian lives.”

  May took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  She pulled the muzzle of her gun away, leaving a perfect circle of red behind and kicked Odachi in the leg. “Get up. Get up now.”

  He groaned and his eyes fluttered several times before he could focus them. The security officer had hit him in the left arm. The material of his uniform shirt was melted into the wound. So much for a pilot with two good arms.

  “Go. Get the hell out of here.”

  May limped over to the fallen Odachi and helped him to his feet. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t. Just don’t. I didn’t do this for you.” Emma looked back at the soldier she had just killed. He could have been any of her squad-mates in the 24th. Someone she was sworn to protect and fight beside.

  No longer.

  She was no better than Odachi. There was no honor in this. In any of it. Not in a Commonwealth that killed its own. Not in a war that targeted civilians. And now she, too, was guilty of treason. She stood up and aimed the gun at her own temple. At least she couldn’t be court martialled if she were dead.

  May reached up, covered Emma’s left hand with her own, and pushed it down. “No. There’s been enough death on my account.”

  Emma blinked back tears. The doctor’s earlier words filled her mind. So no one can use me as a weapon anymore.

  That’s all any of them ever were. Weapons. Tools to be manipulated and scrapped when no longer useful. Scientist, soldier, flitter, gun. It was all the same.

  She slipped the gun into her right hand. Her injured hand. It shook slightly.
“No,” she echoed, but she was responding to a different imperative. As May exhaled and relaxed, Emma lifted the gun. And she shot her own left arm at point blank range.

  Heat seared through her and the pain followed. Her anguished howl filled the docking bay. The room slid sideways and she stared up at May, confused. When had the scientist gotten so tall?

  “Why?” May’s voice was a horrified whisper. She knelt at Emma’s side, her hands fluttering uselessly in the air beside her.

  “Hey, look, no blood.” Emma stared at the burned ruin of what had been her shoulder and upper arm.

  “Why?” May insisted.

  There were tears rolling down her face. The doctor was crying for her. For her.

  Odachi looked down at her. “I’m sorry.” He turned to Dr. May. “We have to go. Now. Or never.”

  “We can’t leave her!”

  “Trash the docking bay,” Emma said. “Drag me out of here and set charges.” Her voice seemed to come from someplace very far away. “Do it!” Everything made sense now. They had to leave. Make it look like they’d blown themselves up in the process. She had to stay. Stay to cover their tracks. And with her gun hand ruined, she would never be just a weapon again.

  There was a strange logic to her thoughts. She stared at Odachi. “Get her out. Don’t waste this.” The nerves in her left arm were screaming and it was getting harder and harder to focus her vision. “If I ever see you again, you’re a dead man.”

  May squeezed her right hand and everything went black.

  * * *

  An insistent beeping interrupted the silence. Emma tried to lift her arm to swat the noise away, but her arm didn’t listen to her.

  “Welcome back, Corporal.”

  She blinked her eyes open. Bright lights nearly blinded her.

  “I’m sorry. We couldn’t save it.”

  That’s why she didn’t feel any pain. It was okay. Being alive was a surprise. She just wasn’t sure it was a welcome one.

  “Are you up for a visitor?”

  She wasn’t sure she was ready to stay awake either, much less talk to anyone.

  Voices slid past her and she let them. It had nothing to do with her. A chair scraped along the floor.

  “Corporal, how are you feeling?”

  The voice was familiar, but it was shrouded in haze and she couldn’t identify it.

  “Can she hear me?” the man asked.

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Commander. Commander Brent. Emma’s thoughts sharpened to a knife’s edge. Brent. And it all came flooding back. Dauber. The dead soldiers. Odachi. May. Treason. Treason and lies. She glanced back at where her left arm should have been. It was an empty place covered by a thin sheet.

  “Corporal?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What the hell happened up there? The salvage team is still combing through the wreckage.”

  She closed her eyes again. Good. No one would know what she had done. “Odachi killed them. The security detail.” The man Emma had hit was so clear in her mind. His expression of surprised betrayal would be with her forever. Her own heart ached with an echo of her kill shot.

  “What about Doctor May?”

  Emma sighed. “Dead.”

  “Tell me.”

  She drifted off again and started at a rough touch on her right arm.

  “Corporal?”

  He wasn’t going to leave her alone until she gave him some kind of answer. May’s voice echoed in her mind. Emmaline, is this your choice?

  She had made a choice. It may have been her first real choice in a lifetime of obeying orders. “Odachi thought I was dead. I trapped them in the docking bay. Set my powerpack to overload.”

  “What happened to Dr. May, Corporal?” Brent’s voice was as insistent as the station’s alarm had been.

  May’s earnest gaze shone in her memory. There were so many dead. Too many. What were two more in the official record?

  “Dead,” Emma repeated softly. “She’s dead.”

  * * *

  LJ Cohen is a novelist, poet, blogger, ceramics artist, and relentless optimist. After almost twenty-five years as a physical therapist, LJ now uses her anatomical knowledge and myriad clinical skills to injure characters in her science fiction and fantasy novels.

  The events of this story take place approximately forty years before the start of Derelict: Halcyone Space book 1. The space opera series continues with Ithaka Rising and Dreadnought and Shuttle (June 2016). You may find some familiar characters there.

  Sign up for LJ’s occasional newsletter for publication news, sneak peeks of works in progress, and free short fiction. You can also find her on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

  Silent Witness

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  Silent Witness

  Aria stalked through the crowded corridors, forcing herself to be placid and polite to the many people who called greetings and inquired after her health. Her two bodyguards floated steadily behind, their stealth and the uniforms they wore providing them an easy passage through the crowd.

  Determined to keep her cool, she recited the phrase she’d had ingrained in her since birth. “Temper has no place in a civilized society. Calm and intelligent reasoning are virtues we must cultivate.”

  It was a virtue that hadn’t quite stuck with Aria, well into adulthood, she still fought against the strong feelings that arose in her, it seemed, on an almost daily basis.

  And she only felt more angry, more tense, the nearer she got to her father’s chambers. When she reached the doors, her two guards stepped forward and each pulled a door open. She gave them a nod and walked through as they held the doors open.

  Her father, as always was at his desk. The room was exactly what you’d expect from one of their people: filled with books and other information media, artwork, a few experiments set up on different tables throughout. A bird, one of theirs that had been bred with those from another place, sat in a gilt cage near her father’s large stone desk.

  Upon seeing her, her father rose and immediately held his hands up in a placating manner. “Aria,” he began.

  “Muldoon? You’re sending Muldoon to Earth, of all people?” she asked, trying, and failing, to keep her voice steady and calm.

  “Aria, he is—”

  “And if you say he’s perfectly suited to replace Dyson there, I will scream.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I suggest you remember yourself.”

  Aria took a breath. “I apologize, father. You know I have spent my entire life in the study of Earth. Of all of the Witnesses, I’m the most suited to take up the mantle on Earth. Dyson’s knowledge of the customs and psychology of the Earthers is laughable.”

  “He is a competent enough Witness,” her father said, waving her concerns away. “And you have other matters to attend to.”

  Aria closed her eyes, forced her temper down. She would not win this battle if she let her passion loose. That was a sign of weakness that would not be tolerated. “And that is?”

  Her father walked around the desk, took her hands in his. “You are the next queen of the people of this realm. Your concerns lie here, not in some backwater planet full of barbarians.”

  She started to speak, and a short shake of her father’s head had her biting her words back.

  “The Earthers are of no concern to us.”

  “Yet you send your most trusted advisor there, when we both know you have use of him here.” Aria looked up at her father. Like most of their people he aged very slowly. In his ninetieth decade, he looked not much older than Aria herself. She had inherited his dark brown hair, even as she had her mother’s indigo eyes.

  “I sent my most trusted advisor because he needs some time away to recollect himself. I can manage well without Muldoon. That is the end of it,” he said. He sat back down, and motioned for Aria to take a seat on the other side of the large desk, which she did, arranging the soft, flowing robes she wore around herself. �
�You are of age to take your place as queen, and, truth be told, I am more than ready for you to do so. I long to return to my studies, and there is little time for that now.”

  “I would rather study as well,” she said.

  “As has been the case since the day you first opened your eyes,” her father said. “You have ever been like myself in that way, despite your odd choice of subject matter.”

  “I am not ready to rule. We both know this. My temper—”

  “Is something you should be long past being able to control. And you can, when the mood strikes you. You are also stubborn, which is another trait your mother and I were never able to eradicate in you,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Earth—”

  “Is in its final days, Aria,” her father said, and Aria stared at him in surprise. He nodded. “That is why Muldoon goes. He is ready to bid life good bye, and will Witness the last days of Earth as his final service to our people.”

  “How?”

  “The Sarlene have finally figured out how to launch enough of an attack to eradicate them.”

  Aria tried to focus on her breath. The Sarlene were a race who considered those on Earth an abomination, not because they were so different, but rather because they were too similar in appearance and biology to the Sarlene themselves. The Sarlene Empire, deeply religious as it was, believed that Earth, with its people who were “inferior copies” of the Sarlene, was an evil sent specifically to test their faith. They had decided upon first contact that the only remedy for it was to destroy the planet and its inhabitants entirely. Distance and inferior technology on the part of the Sarlene had been the only thing keeping Earth safe.

  The people of Earth, of course, had no idea that they’d been in the crosshairs the entire time. Each second since the moment the Sarlene had discovered them had been one second closer to Earth’s demise. Two hundred years, nine months, one week, three days, nineteen hours, fifty three minutes and twelve seconds, to be exact.

  Aria watched her father. “The Earthers have done nothing to deserve this,” she said. “They exist. Just as any of us do.”