Hailey's Comet Anthology

by Selma J Lewis

  It. Hailey didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. Its face was badly injured. Its hair and clothes were burned and black. It was too young to have visible gender-identifying body parts. What was it?

  Hailey put the burger down and pushed the plate away. A young, very skinny boy asked if she was going to finish her meal. She looked at the waif and handed it over.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You need anything else?” Hailey asked.

  “I haven’t had milk in a long time,” he said.

  “Sit down. I’ll get you some milk.”

  As the boy ate and drank and Hailey watched and remembered, a question came to her mind. “Are there a lot of independent kids around here?”

  The boy shrugged. Hailey tried again. “How many friends do you have where you live?”

  “There are four of us in the basement of the old ice cream place.”

  “No ice cream there anymore?”

  “Nah. They closed a long time ago.”

  “That’s a shame. Bet ya would’ve been good at sneaking upstairs at night to have a little sample, huh?”

  “I wish.”

  “How many other kids around the neighborhood?”

  “I dunno. Ten, maybe.”

  “Ever thought about going to school?”

  “Why?”

  “So you can learn to read and stuff, and not eat other people’s leftovers your whole life.”

  “When I’m old enough, I can work in the mine. Then I’ll get a place to live. All the miners have places to live.”

  “I’m glad you have a plan. How long until then?”

  “Six years.”

  “You just want to wander around for six years? At least if you go to school you have something to do.”

  “What do you know? I’ve got plenty to do.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re so rich, you buy a big-ass cheeseburger and throw half of it away. Rich people waste stuff.”

  “It’s not wasted now,” Hailey pointed out. Hailey, in fact, hated waste. She knew exactly what the urchin was talking about. She had the same thoughts at that age. She recognized herself in all the street kids she saw on all the planets she visited. There were too many for her to save from poverty; she didn’t have the means. She comforted herself knowing that at least she was making the general area safer for the kids by rooting out rebels and other blights on society.

  “Thank you,” the boy said in response.

  “You steal clothes when you need ‘em?” Hailey asked.

  “No.”

  “I did, when I was your age. You walk past outdoor groceries and swipe fruit?”

  “No.”

  “I did. I used to wait outta sight of the servers at cafes like this and when the customers left, I walked by and picked up food. I was really good at it. Never got caught.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I figured it was better than stealing because they were just gonna throw it out anyway. Nobody loses.”

  “I go to the dumpsters…”

  “I knew kids who did that, but dumpsters stink, and there’s bugs and things.”

  “Yeah,” the boy agreed.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Steven.”

  “What happened to your family?”

  “I gotta go,” Steven said abruptly.

  “Got an important meeting, huh? If you don’t want to tell me things, that’s your right. I take back my question.”

  “Just don’t take back the burger,” Steven said, eyeing her. Hailey tried to hold back a smile but was unsuccessful. Steven dropped his tough-kid façade and smiled back at her. “What’s your name?”

  “Hailey.”

  “You really grew up on the streets?”

  “Really.”

  “You look rich now.”

  “I have a job.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I don’t live anywhere,” Hailey said, realizing that she really had no home, except maybe the Scabbard.

  “How can you not live anywhere?”

  “Can you keep a secret?” Hailey asked Steven.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m a secret agent from SWORD. I don’t live anywhere because I’m always travelling around doin’ secret agent work.”

  “What’s SWORD?”

  “Oh, it’s part of the government of the whole Empire, not just Sigmatál. We do the hard jobs that other people can’t do for themselves. Agents get assignments to go to all sorts of planets and solve problems.”

  “You here to solve a problem?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I wouldn’t be a very good secret agent if I told you about my mission, would I?”

  “I dunno.”

  Hailey smiled. “I’m looking for some bad guys.”

  “Did the bad guys make that car explode yesterday?”

  “Yeah. One of them is a tall, blond guy, hair about as long as yours. Have you seen someone like that?” Hailey asked.

  “No,” Steven replied, concentrating more on the burger than the description.

  “Steven, I gotta go back to work. I’m gonna have the server bring you a big bag of stuff from the kitchen. I want you to take it back to your buddies and share, OK?”

  “OK,” Steven said, looking up at Hailey and really seeing her for the first time. “Hailey,” he started.

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you get off the streets?”

  “School, then a job.”

  Steven thought for a second. “How do I get into school?”

  “I don’t know the system here, but I suspect you can just walk into the school and ask one of the adults how to do it.” Hailey stood. “Stay here and eat. I’ll go pay the check. And don’t leave until the server brings you the bag. Got it?”

  “I got it. Thank you, Hailey. For my friends, too.”

  “Take care of yourself, Steven,” Hailey said, giving him a sympathetic smile. He nodded. She left.

  Round Up

  Back at HQ, Hailey found Corporal Lipton and asked to see the suspect.

  “He’s in the holding room, right this way.”

  “Where’s Landry?”

  “In his office.”

  “Where’s Bracken?”

  “He’s been called in. Should be here soon.”

  “When Bracken gets here, tell him the sergeant wants him in the holding room.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lipton, wait a second. Take me in there and cuff me like you did the suspect.” Lipton was confused. “Trust me. Don’t send Bracken in until I signal you, and don’t let him see the vid feed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lipton led Hailey into the room where a lone man sat on a metal chair, handcuffed to a metal table in front of him. The corporal pointed to a second chair and Hailey sat in it. Lipton cuffed her hands to the metal table but left them a little loose. Then he left.

  “This is your fault,” Hailey said to the man.

  “What?” he asked defensively.

  “You made that ruckus in the spaceport and got the police watching you. I’ll bet you went right to the college and started recruiting.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Backup, moron.”

  “Who sent you? Wallace?”

  He really is a moron. “What do you think?” she spat.

  “I’ve never seen you before.”

  “You think you know the whole organization?”

  The suspect squirmed under her superior intensity. “Making a ruckus was my assignment so Sjorn could get through!”

  Hailey rolled her eyes. “The one that pulled you aside and spoke to you, is he an ally?”

  “I guess you don’t know the whole organization either,” he said with false confidence.

  “Of course I don’t know the Sigmatál organization. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure idiots like you get your jobs done. At least Sjorn did his part.” />
  “Half.”

  “Well, yeah. Half. But he didn’t get caught.”

  A light went on in the suspect’s head. “How did you get caught?”

  “They’re rounding up everyone who was on the shuttle ever since that bomb went off. If you let on that I’m with you guys, you’ll be sorry! I gotta get out of here so I can get you losers off the planet.”

  “Yeah, well, the sooner the better. Sjorn can’t do part two anyway, now that the government rounded up all the pins.”

  “What a disaster. Goin’ back to Fansha is gonna be a bitch. I’m getting out of here and you’re going to help me, you got that?”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “If they question you about your activities, make sure you make it clear you don’t know me, I’m not with you, like that.”

  “What about me? You want me to confess?”

  “Do. Don’t. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll get you out before the shuttle leaves.”

  “How?”

  “Got my own stash of C7. Sjorn and me will bust you out if we have to.”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “Don’t worry; even morons are worth the effort.” The suspect scowled at the insult. Hailey continued. “Where did Sjorn go? I gotta meet up with him and see if we can salvage this mission somehow.”

  “Some house on E Street, he told me.”

  Hailey looked at the hidden camera in the corner of the room. She spotted the electronic signal as the camera sent vid wirelessly to a screen somewhere else in the building. She hoped her direct look would signal Lipton to send Bracken in.

  Hailey’s trusty sidekick did his part. Soon, Bracken entered and stopped short when he saw who was there. Hailey smiled imperceptibly. Bracken’s bio signs, facial twitches, and body language were so obvious, he might as well have had “accomplice” written across his forehead.

  “Oh, good,” the suspect said with relief.

  “Shut up!” Bracken whispered forcefully.

  The suspect lowered his voice as Bracken approached the table. “You’ve got to get us out of here.”

  “This is your guy?” Hailey asked. The suspect nodded the slightest bit. “What about that other cop you talked to?” she whispered.

  The suspect shook his head. “Just a cop.”

  “Who are you?” Bracken asked. Hailey tossed a look to the suspect.

  “She’s with us. Backup.”

  Thank you, moron.

  “Look, you’re here to interrogate us, right?” Hailey said. Bracken acknowledged the statement. “We can salvage this. Ask us a bunch of questions. Set me loose, and I’ll get everything cleaned up on the outside. We’ll be on the shuttle by morning.”

  “Tusk?” Bracken whispered, tilting a head at the suspect.

  “They caught him making the pitch. You can’t let him go, but I’ll bust him out later. You’ll help me.”

  “This is not what I signed up for. A few points to let people through so they can exercise their right to free speech, OK. Breaking people out of jail? No can do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Just be the one guarding him, then look the other way.”

  Bracken sighed and went to the corner of the room to fetch a third chair. Hailey leaned over to Tusk. “I’ll pop him, if need be, to get you out. Do your part now. Got it?” Tusk nodded sullenly.

  Hailey was released and went straight to the commander to fill her in. “I’ll send my forces to E Street to pick up Sjorn.”

  Hailey shook her head. “He’ll bolt if he sees the uniforms. I’ll take care of him tonight. How’s the pin collection going?”

  “It’s impossible to say if we have all of them or not, but we’ve tallied up over forty-five thousand dropped in all the boxes combined.”

  “That leaves quite a few out there. Please send a more urgent warning out. We’ve got to keep the citizens safe.”

  “Yes, Agent Ramirez.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” Hailey paused. “Commander, do you know how the bombing victims are doing?”

  “They didn’t make it, Agent. I’m sorry.” Hailey nodded, then silently left the office.

  Days were short on Sigmatál. Already, the sun was setting as she left Sector Security headquarters. After a stop at her rented room to change into her black Wraith suit, Hailey slipped out of the hotel unseen and headed for E Street. Her non-reflective black suit disappeared into the darkness of the night. On E Street, she stopped in front of each house, focusing her hearing to the inside of the dwelling and going through every mode of eyesight. She could not tell which house Sjorn was in, if any of them.

  Plan B. She went to the first house on the street and stood on the porch, unseen. Hailey listened to the activity inside, then activated her voice filter, tuning it to a random pitch. “Sjorn.” The voices inside the house stopped, then whispered to each other.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. Sounded like a robot. What did it say?”

  “Yorn, I think. That’s what I heard.”

  “Probably some bored kids messing around.”

  Hailey left the house and proceeded to the next. She repeated her experiment at the next five houses. On the sixth, the voices had a very different reaction than most of the regular families on the street.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s the cops. They said, ‘Sjorn.’”

  “You gotta get me outta here!”

  “How?”

  “You go open the door and distract them. I’ll sneak out the back. Tell ‘em you don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “OK. Get going.” Hailey flew around to the back of the house and found… no one. A door closed on the side of the house. She checked the side but no one was there. She returned to the front porch where the owner of the house had opened the door, found no one, and given up. Maybe they called him back in.

  Hailey listened again.

  “He get away?”

  “Yeah, side door. I watched until he was around the hedges, then locked up.”

  Crap. Hailey leapt off the porch, clearing a meter of bushes that grew in front of it, and ran to the street. She looked left, then right. The side door was closest to the hedges on the right, so she ran down the street in that direction. She used infrared mode to search for his heat signature, but heat emanated from everywhere. Some people were out for evening walks with their dogs, others were just coming home from wherever they had been. At the end of the street, a red and orange figure shot out from a yard and dashed around the corner. Hailey chased him.

  As he ran, his body temperature increased and consequently glowed brighter in her infrared sight. He was now in the orange and yellow range. She caught up and tackled him, springing back up to her feet instantly. Hailey stood over the fallen Sjorn. “That’s it for you,” she said.

  He held out his hand. “Don’t come any closer.” Hailey didn’t heed his warning. “I mean it,” he huffed. “I’ll blow ‘em all.” Hailey stopped.

  “Blow what all?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “The pins.”

  “The pins have all been collected.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You willing to take the chance?”

  “You willing to take a bullet?” Hailey pulled out a pistol. “My reactions are really, really fast. If you move a muscle, I’ll shoot your hand clean off your arm.”

  “OK, OK. Don’t shoot,” Sjorn replied, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Give me the remote,” Hailey ordered. Sjorn slowly opened his hand to reveal a small fob with a tiny button. Hailey’s proximity alarm told her someone was behind her, sixteen meters at her five o’clock. “I know you’re there,” she said, keeping her eyes and gun on Sjorn.

  “Drop the weapon,” a voice said.

  “Why?” Hailey asked.

  The person behind her flustered. “Be-… because I have a gun on you.”

  Hailey slowly turned around. She recognized the voice from the house
Sjorn had been hiding in. He did, in fact, have a gun. She lowered her arm and put her gun back in its holster. She wasn’t worried; she could draw her gun in plenty of time to out-shoot the nervous neighbor.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now you…”

  “Shoot it, Ben!” Sjorn ordered. Ben shook with indecision.

  “I don’t recommend it,” Hailey warned.

  “Now!” Sjorn cried. Ben’s face contorted as he struggled to work up the nerve to shoot the black figure who was menacing his compatriot.

  “If you take a shot, that’s a serious crime. Right now, you’re not in that much trouble.” Hailey hoped her words outweighed Sjorn’s in Ben’s mind.

  Ben waffled. Hailey’s helmet warned her that Sjorn was making an attack run from behind. Hailey ducked his attack at the very moment Ben pulled the trigger. Hailey rolled out of the way and came up standing with her pistol in hand once again. Sjorn lay on the ground, bleeding from a bullet wound to the chest. Scattered pops rang out in the neighborhood. They almost sounded like gunshots, but Hailey knew they weren’t. Crap.

  “Comm the medics for your friend,” she instructed Ben. He was paralyzed, staring at the outcome of his poor decision. Hailey grabbed the gun out of his petrified grip and slapped his face. “Comm the medics!” Ben fumbled for his comm and pushed the emergency button on the comm app. Hailey went to Sjorn and tore a sleeve off his shirt. She folded it up and pressed it against the wound, slowing the bleeding. She looked at his hand, the one that held the fob. It lay open now, the fob nearby on the ground. Either his charge at her or the shock of being shot must have made his hand clamp down on the device, pressing the button, and detonating all the flag pins in the community.

  A siren approached the neighborhood. No, not a siren. Several sirens. The ambulances stopped at various houses as one pulled up near Sjorn. Hailey disappeared into the darkness leaving Ben to explain what happened. She ran to one of the other emergency vehicles and saw the medics tending to a woman with a nasty wound in her upper chest. “…didn’t have a chance. Went right through the heart…” one medic said to the other while a man sat on the curb nearby, sobbing. Hailey turned away from the sight, cursing her TDN for preserving that scene in her memory forever.